


Twenty Questions

by AveChameleon, rockykelboa



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Bulma is a brat, F/M, First Dates, Online Dating, Romantic Comedy, Vegeta Swears A Lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:48:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29439978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AveChameleon/pseuds/AveChameleon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockykelboa/pseuds/rockykelboa
Summary: When it comes to online dating, there are daters and there are haters. Not all online connections are authentic. For Bulma and Vegeta, there’s only one way to find out.Written for the Vegebulocracy First Dates author collab event. Artwork byMequetrefis
Relationships: Bulma Briefs & Vegeta, Bulma Briefs/Vegeta
Comments: 110
Kudos: 107
Collections: Vegebul First Dates





	1. 50 First Dates

Bulma’s phone began to chirp from the cupholder. She grit her teeth, trying to tune it out as she maneuvered her car into a precariously tight space. The only one she could find that was within stiletto-walking distance to the bar just had to be sandwiched between two luxury vehicles. She’d rather not nick them with her own—at least not badly enough to notice. The Tesla ahead of her resettled on its axis as she reversed a few inches off its bumper.

 _Yeesh._ Personal effects at the ready, she quickly darted toward the curb and hit send on Krillin’s missed call. This level of multitasking was an art form she had down pat. She tucked her phone against her neck, paying little attention to the handful of quarters she began to flick into the meter. It hardly made a difference when the dumb things expired every two hours to earn a ticket or tow regardless.

“Hey dude. What’s up?”

“Hey! You almost here?”

“Where? … Oh, shit!” 

Game night, she’d forgotten completely, or maybe intentionally... His new girlfriend was bringing her brother, which is why they needed Bulma to show-up, reliably stag, and even out the numbers. The idea of being a buffer to the couple’s insecurities sounded about as fun as church. She’d blocked it out. 

“Sorry! I got caught up at the office. Helluva day. I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”

She could practically hear the squeak of Krillin’s palm polishing his head to a shine. He didn’t buy it. Not that he would have even if she’d made the feeblest effort.

“So who’s it this time?” he sighed.

“You remember that guy I was telling you about?”

“That narrows it down to half the city. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“ _Tch_ … The one I showed you yesterday.”

“The mean one I said looks like a hit man? And you said you’d still hit that even if he was?”

“Fucking smoldering. Can you blame me?” She bit her lip recalling the one and only image the man had in his profile—some shirtless gym selfie that didn’t require any of the obvious flexing to make her want to lick the sweat off his abs.

“Egh… Be careful, Bulma. Internet’s full of creeps and–“

“And SCU is working overtime thanks to Tinder and blah blah blah. I appreciate the concern, officer, but I’m a big girl.”

“You’re a hundred and ten pound pixie.”

“Aww, you’re sweet to guess my weight.”

“Wasn’t a guess. I cleared up your arrest warrant on my lunch break. Next time, maybe consider paying your parking tickets on time. Or better yet, pay for parking. You can afford it.”

“Kind of a catch-22, bud. Don’t drive drunk, but can’t park overnight at the meter.”

“So Uber both ways.”

“Thought Uber was full of creeps.”

“Two of whom you slept with.”

“Yeah, well… Beats rubbing one out in the shower when your ride home turns out to be more charming than your dud date.”

Bulma stopped before the large glass panes of the establishment her current date had procured and peered through the windows. Classic. It was one of those swanky places with biomorphic furniture that seemed hardly functional but guys assumed would dazzle her. Not disclosing the fact that she was the heiress to a multi-billion dollar fortune did little to keep men from trying to impress her with trendy LED lights and velvet chairs shaped like human organs.

She spotted her latest match sitting stiffly at the long bar, glancing around as he loosened his tie. Ugh… if his shirtless selfie set her mouth to water, the slim, navy suit he was wearing had the back of her hand wiping a line of drool from her lips to avoid filling a pothole with a puddle.

“Tell Goku and the girls hi. Gotta go!”

Bulma checked her reflection in the windows, readjusting her tits in the strapless little number before she sauntered inside.

* * *

It wasn't unusual for Nappa to invite Vegeta to have a drink after work. The invitation was extended pretty much daily, though it was only accepted every couple of weeks. Lately, Nappa had been even more insistent for some reason, and today he hadn’t taken no for an answer. That was suspicious enough, but when Vegeta got to the address Nappa had sent him he was even more disquieted. This was not the kind of place they usually went. This place was upscale; big windows, chrome accents, Swedish designer furniture. Hell, there were actual plants in the corner. Nappa usually went for the kind of place where light came from neon signs advertising terrible beer, the furniture style was "collected from the curb on trash day", and the only thing growing was on the floor of the men's room. 

Usually, Nappa got there first, as he had absolutely no qualms about ducking out of the office early and took pretty much any excuse to do so. But today he'd claimed to have to stay behind to finish a brief, and Vegeta should meet him in a bit and text when he got there. So, sighing, Vegeta sat down on an uncomfortable barstool and ordered a stupidly overpriced scotch on the rocks. _Why the fuck did he decide on this place?_ he wondered. He loosened his tie, took a hit of the scotch, and pulled out his phone.

Nappa  
  
**V:** I'm here. What's your ETA?  
  
**N:** Yeah sorry buddy  
  
**N:** Not comin  
  
**V:** The fuck? What do you mean you're not coming, dick?  
  
**V:** This was your idea!  
  
**N:** Because you'd never have shown if I told you  
  
**N:** You’re on a date, my friend 😎  
  
**V:** WHAT  
  
**N:** Should be some little blue hair cutie looking for ya  
  
**N:** You met her on Tinder  
  
**N:** BTW made you a profile  
  
**V:** WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK  
  
**V:** GODDAMMIT NAPPA  
  
**N:** Maybe you'll finally get laid and stop being such an asshole  
  
**N:** 😘  
  
**V:** Fuck you, and fuck this.  
  
**V:** I'm out.  
  
**N:** You leave and you'll break that cuties 💖  
  
**N:** Also I'll tell Frieza you intentionally threw the Namek case  
  
**V:** You wouldn't fucking dare.  
  
**N:** Try me  
  
**N:** Go out, be charming, have fun  
  
**N:** Do something besides work for once in your life  
  
**N:** …  
  
**N:** And if you do get laid I wanna see pics  
  


Vegeta bowed his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Nappa was perfectly capable of carrying out his threat, and if Frieza found out… well, his non-compete agreement was so tight that he _might_ be able to get a job as a Walmart Greeter after he was fired faster than Raditz getting shot down on a Saturday night. Probably sued to oblivion, to boot.

 _Fine. Whatever. I'll deal with this nonsense for tonight and murder him tomorrow._ Resisting the urge to throw his phone at the bar mirror, he put it back in his pocket and looked around. _Blue hair, huh? That should be easy to find._ And sure enough, on his eyes’ second sweep of the room, there she was.

He froze, feeling his lungs stop working for a second. _Oh, shit,_ he thought. _I’m in trouble._

She was fucking gorgeous. With only her hair color to go off of, he was expecting some faux-punk idiot who thought working as a barista counted as “fighting the man.” But this woman exuded class. Instead of the garish koolaid-neon color he had pictured, the hair tumbling in soft rings to her shoulders was an elegant ocean blue that matched the color of her wide eyes. Her obviously designer dress hugged her body just enough to send his imagination into overdrive, and had a hemline that showed off the best goddamn legs he’d ever seen.

 _God fucking dammit, Nappa,_ he thought with a scowl. _Couldn’t you at least have set me up with someone in my goddamn league?_ He wondered how long it would take for her to realize he was a total asshole and make some sort of polite excuse to leave. He sighed. This night was going to be a complete waste of time. Maybe he could duck out the back…

But it was too late. Her eyes met his with a spark of recognition, and she glided across the room directly toward him. “Hey there,” she said with a smile. “You must be Vegeta. I’m Bulma.” Her voice wasn’t as sultry as he was expecting; rather—much to his annoyed pleasure—it had a sharpness to it that pointed toward a dry sense of humor.

“Sure, yeah. Vegeta.” He cringed inwardly. _Smooth. She already knew your name, idiot._ She stood in front of him for half a second too long, before drawing out the stool next to him and sitting down. _Fuck. I should have done that for her. Doing great so far_. He cleared his throat and signaled to the bartender. “Want a drink? I mean, can I get you something?”

The server came over. “I’ll take a vodka soda with a twist. And let’s get this guy another… scotch on the rocks?” she guessed. “You seem to be out.”

Vegeta looked at his glass. He was, indeed, out. “Whatever. Sure.” His eyes slid away from her in a desperate attempt to not drool down her cleavage. 

“Make them both double, okay hon?” she asked the bartender. She leaned back on the hideous barstool, making it look somehow comfortable. “Nice place,” she said with a stunning smile. “Is this where you usually meet your dates?” 

“No,” he said curtly. His face felt hot, and he had a massive urge to beat his coworker until there was nothing left but a stain on the fucking carpet that Frieza would dock his pay to have cleaned up.

“O...kay.” Her smile slipped for a fraction of a second before perking up again. “So I’m the first, huh? I must be special!” she said with a wink. “How did you find this place, anyway?”

 _Well, you see, my idiot friend picked it and I’m only here because I’m a fucking moron who apparently falls for stupid practical jokes._ He let out a small growl. “It was… nearby,” he answered. He knew he was acting like a prick to her, but honestly, the sooner she figured out he wasn’t worth her time, the sooner he could get the hell out of this.


	2. Failure to Launch

Bulma felt her smile harden as they waited for their drinks. Keeping it up for the both of them was tiring. While she’d reeled in her fair share of catfish on internet dates, this was the first one whose appearance was exactly as advertised, possibly better. It was his personality that flopped. He reminded her of her first date in middle school who said less than three words and made more eye contact with his pizza. Though somehow, Vegeta didn’t seem so adorably inept as her now best friend had been in eighth grade. He was too hot and, judging by the designer threads, too successful for his awkward lack of enthusiasm to be organic. 

This wasn’t a game. This was _The Game_. Like every other douchebag, he probably never finished the book to catch the story’s moral. He was the playboy equivalent of an evangelical that cherry picked points, yet still kept the sacred text tucked inside a drawer full of condoms at his bedside like a pickup artist’s bible. He was doing the negging thing, pretending to be cold and disinterested to undermine her self-esteem. Too bad for him, she was a pro. If Bulma was good at sussing out his species, she was even better at using their own tactics to thwart them.

“Oh shit! I’m such a klutz,” she chimed, after knocking her purse off the bar top as she pretended to make room for their drinks. It flew across the tile further than she’d intended and spun to a stop a few chairs down. 

Her date didn’t jump to rescue her clutch from the floor. This one was good. Not a twitch broke his stolid countenance. He took a long gulp from his drink as if he hadn’t noticed. Oh, she’d make him notice, Bulma thought as she slipped off the stool. She knew exactly how far she needed to bend over in her dress to make a devout monk renege his vows of celibacy. By comparison, a fancy playboy would be easy to break. 

Though suddenly Bulma found herself spared from giving Vegeta and the rest of the room a show. A big, broad-shouldered blonde that could probably deadlift her with his pinkies scooped up her clutch from where it landed between his feet. With a half-cocked grin showing his perfect, square teeth, he extended it toward her.

“Thanks,” Bulma smiled back, but her fingertips barely brushed its calfskin leather before he yanked it out of reach. 

“Not so fast,” he said when Bulma lunged for his arm. He lifted it over his head and nodded toward the stool beside him. “A pretty girl like you won’t be needing this. Take a seat. Your drinks are on me.”

Being tall, buff and handsome wasn’t enough to make it worth entertaining the presumptuous ass even as a prop to provoke her actual date. 

“Thanks, but I already have a drink,” Bulma said rather crossly.

The man glanced past her at Vegeta and chuffed, “No offense, but it looks a little weak.”

“No offense, but if I wanted to be roofied unconscious by a strong glass of rail piss, I’d be bar hopping on frat row,” Bulma said, cocking her head along with her hip. “Give me my purse.”

“Ooo, feisty.” He pretended to shiver, then shot a look at his stocky sidekick who leaned against the bar behind him, chuckling mirthfully into his glass. The big man shifted away from her and began to examine her clutch, turning it over in his massive paws like he’d discovered it on the jungle floor and hoped it might taste like bananas. 

“What’s your name, princess?” he asked. 

“It’s give me my fucking wallet before I puncture your testicles.” Bulma clicked a sharp stiletto heel against the tile, thoroughly pleased to see the jerk’s misplaced bravado retreat from his lips.

“ _Tch._ Your loss, cunt,” he grumbled and roughly shoved her clutch into her chest.

“Yep, big loss. It’s every girl's dream to be mugged, bribed, and belittled by a delusional meathead. How will I ever live with myself?”

Bulma was so caught up with the chauvinistic fuck she left to mutter a string of slurs at her back, she forgot she was still on a date with another one. To her surprise, Vegeta was smirking at her with a kind of second-hand smugness. He watched her cross the room like a muse waiting at the wing of the stage as she exited to a standing ovation and a conductor’s wand, instead of a purse, clung tightly in her fist. 

“Enjoy that did you, mister _‘looking for someone sweet?’_ ” she teased as she hopped back on the stool beside him.

“Mister what?” 

“You said in the chat–” 

“Right... in the chat...” Vegeta repeated and quickly tossed back what was left of his drink. 

If he’d been lying, Bulma wouldn’t be surprised. All guys copy-pasted the same boiler plate bullshit, claiming to be searching for a nice, sweet girl. Most of them assumed that translated to dumb and submissive. And most girls fell for the line because they’d been brainwashed by Walt Disney tropes since the moment of conception to believe it. What didn’t make sense was how Vegeta clearly seemed to have forgotten the script. 

Judging from the expression he hosted not ten seconds ago as he watched her put down a pitbull, he wasn’t the type that subbed sweet for submissive. And if he was, feeding her and every other match on the app that sort of horseshit would be impossible to forget, much less fail to uphold IRL. Even if he was a twenty-to-one longshot—an honest guy that stumbled onto the wrong dating app, hoping the final Miss Swipe Right was waiting for him at the finish line—there was no question he would’ve analyzed each and every self-conscious little word before it left the gate. Vegeta was either a sensitive, functional alcoholic, or a well-meaning amnesiac, or most probably, his lack of awareness for their online exchange meant he wasn’t the person at the other end of Bulma’s DMs.

He let a pause fall as he slowly turned an empty glass between his fingers, squinting at the remnant ice cubes like they told his fortune. Maybe they did. 

“Don’t tell me they work as well as tea leaves,” Bulma prompted. 

Like most people that subscribed to the sanity of logic, her date sniggered. As he rattled his cup at the bartender begging another, Bulma forced the sincerest expression of intrigue before she dropped a baited hook into the water to test him. 

“Phew, thank god. As it was leaving my mouth I thought, _‘Damn Bulma, way to cross a line.’_ I promise I wasn’t maliciously making fun of your interest in Tasseography knowing how much you said in the chat it changed your life.”

 _Ah ha! There it was._ Bulma tried to keep a straight face as Vegeta instantly sputtered. His eyes went wide before he burst into a fit of coughs. 

“You okay?”

“Just swallowed wrong. Ugh.” He cleared his throat and glared at the bartender’s back. In his head, he was likely cursing the man for not swooping to the rescue to save him from an imaginary conversation. 

“Can’t say I’ve ever met a tasseographer before. Err... sorry, _devoted student._ Maybe you can show me how it works sometime?” 

“... Maps...?” Vegeta’s head tilted, drawing out the word as if waiting for Bulma to nod before he committed to throwing another layer of nonsense onto the pile. “Yes, well… maps are quite complicated. Being born overseas and all, they were always a fascination… life changing, perhaps.” 

Bulma could see how he’d get there. Cartography did share one of the same consonants. Why crush the made-up dreams of a twenty-first century Magellan by pointing out his failure to map a single contextual clue from a conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with maps? It was downright unfair, especially knowing English wasn’t the first language he learned to lie in. Compared to his ghostwriter, he sure sucked at it.

“Sadala, right?”

“Yeah,” Vegeta agreed with a sigh, as if relieved that he could.

“Why did you leave?”

Bulma asked the question honestly, yet didn’t expect him to answer with as much, even if it took the form of a snide counter.

“I take it world history isn’t covered here at Grand Central Station?”

“Sadly, not any more in depth than your basic cartography.”

“The fuck is that?”

“Oh it’s pretty boring. Just the art of depicting the longitudes and latitudes of a three-dimensional plane into an accurate two-dimensional representation of them, mostly.” 

“Sounds fun,” he droned. “That some sort of liberal arts thing?”

“Compared to mechanical engineering, I suppose it could be considered one.” 

Vegeta nodded at her blankly, as if unwilling to admit that unlike his ghostwriter, he had no fucking clue about her profession and was too afraid to ask in case she’d already told him in the godforsaken chat. 

“Besides, what the hell does a women's studies major have against liberal arts? Hate to break it to ya mister, but banging angry feminists is not technically a science.”

Vegeta didn't even try to touch that line of bullshit. He pretended not to hear it and snapped his fingers at the bartender, pleading for their tab. 

Oh, this was going to be the most fun anyone’s had on an internet date since Tom met Meg on dial-up.


	3. Clueless

Somewhere between the brutal evisceration of the ‘roid monkey—a thing of true beauty if he’d ever seen one—and the challenge of going in blind to the game of twenty questions she was putting him through, Vegeta realized something awful. He was beginning to enjoy himself. What’s more, if he was reading her correctly, Bulma was enjoying herself too. She was acting like pulling reactions out of him, rather than being a tedious chore, was some sort of amusement. Maybe this night wasn’t a total wash after all.

Bulma had just asked something about women's studies— _Goddammit, Nappa_ —but Vegeta's attention was taken up by the meathead speaking quietly with his lame friend, both of them tossing back shots and eyeing his date with a venomous intent. And as much as he was confident he could take them both down, his suit was brand new and he hated to think it might get ruined so soon. He raised his hand to signal for the tab, and turned to the woman. “As fascinating as this discussion of obscure pastimes is, these shitty barstools are starting to hurt my ass. Let’s get out of here.” He threw down a bill big enough to cover the drinks even at this ridiculous place, then stood and offered a hand to his date. _See, he learns._

When they left the bar, Vegeta found he had a serious problem. He was pretty sure that this was the part of the date where they should have dinner somewhere, but Nappa had sent him to some way-too-hip-for-you neighborhood that he had always avoided like the plague. There was no way he was going to eat at one of these hipster vegan guava bowl “experiences” with a pun for a name. But there was no real escape to somewhere more familiar. _Of course I had to take the fucking subway today,_ he thought with a scowl.

Hang on—there was something. Small, quiet, no neon lights or soft electronica coming out of the doorway. And a nice simple name—“Blue Nile” couldn’t be serving anything too weird, right?

He jerked his head toward the restaurant. “Here, I figured we could eat at this place.”

Bulma raised an eyebrow at him. “Really? Bold choice. But a good one. I love Ethiopian.”

 _‘Bold choice’? Why bold?_ Shit. He didn’t like bold. But it was too late now. He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the door. 

The entryway was small, filled with colorful straw baskets with conical lids, brass serving trays, and photographs of steep forested mountains. The air was permeated with the smell of exotic spices, and suddenly Vegeta was hit with a cloudy memory of walking through a crowded marketplace. Stalls heaped with vegetables of every color, piles of spice, the sound of housewives haggling, old men drinking tea in the shade to escape the heat of midday back home. _No._ He gave his head a forceful shake. _Not home._ He barely remembered the place. 

She regarded him with a strange look on her face. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” he growled. “Let’s sit down.” He stalked over to an open table and sat, not waiting for her response. 

A smiling woman came over to them and set down two menus. “Two beers,” he ordered. “Whatever your best is.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noted Bulma nodding in approval, and he almost smiled involuntarily before squashing the impulse. _Why the hell am I happy she fucking nodded? What is wrong with me?_ His face began to burn again, and he opened his menu to keep himself from having to meet her eyes.

Quickly he regretted his decision. The menu was filled with words he didn’t understand, and seemed to be half written in...were these runes? His brow furrowed as he tried to decipher the descriptions with very little success. _What is the fuck is a ‘tib’? Shit...there has to be something here I can order without a translation dictionary..._

Too quickly, the waitress returned with two bottles of an unfamiliar brand of beer and chilled glasses. “Do you have any questions about the menu?” she asked.

“No, I’m ready,” said Bulma. “I haven’t had Doro Wat for some time, so I’ll go for that, thanks.” _Of course she knows what the hell this stuff is,_ he fumed. 

The waitress turned to Vegeta expectantly. He scanned the menu frantically, his eyes finally landing on a familiar word. _Can’t go wrong with steak,_ he thought. “Yeah, I’ll have this one.”

The waitress looked at him skeptically. “Are you sure, sir? Kitfo can be a little tricky-”

“I know what I ordered,” he snapped.

“Okay, then I’ll go get this started for you.” She gathered the menus and walked away.

He turned back to his date and angrily poured out their beers. “I’m glad you brought me here tonight. This is going to be a blast,” said Bulma with a strange smile on her face. “I haven’t had Ethiopian for a while. You?”

Hell if he was going to look like an uncultured idiot in front of her. “A while, I guess. Not too long.”

“You must have sampled a lot of different cuisines, during that world tour with the modern dance company you were telling about in the chat.”

 _Modern dance?_ His eyes widened in horror. _Modern fucking dance, Nappa? As if the fucking map thing wasn’t bad enough? Oh, he is DEAD._ Vegeta swore to every god he could think of that he would brutally murder Nappa, dismember his corpse, burn the dismembered remains, scatter the ashes, and salt the fields where they landed.

He took a deep breath to steady himself before braving through. “I...didn’t really get out much during the tour,” he said through gritted teeth.

"Surprising. You seem like the kind of guy who would never turn down the chance to try something new,” she said with a smile. “I guess you were probably rehearsing too much to see the sights. But hey, that’s why you won the National Championships three years running, right?”

“Yeah, well, it’s important to practice.” _Son of a fucking bitch._

“How did you get interested in dance in the first place?” 

“It’s...good exercise. But I didn’t do it for that long.”

“Oh, really? I thought you said you did it every summer during college?” she asked.

Deep breath. “I did Running Start so I graduated early. Didn’t have time for that nonsense afterward.”

“Yes, I guess the new job as a skydiving instructor must have kept you pretty busy,” she said innocently.

Too innocently. His eyes narrowed. _Hang on._ Okay, the map thing he could see Nappa doing, and the dance thing maybe, if he had a major death wish. But skydiving too? He doubted Nappa would even believe people voluntarily threw themselves out of airplanes. Which meant— _Oh, goddammit._

He leaned back in his seat and tightly crossed his arms, his lips pressed together in a thin line. Incredulously, he said, “You’re fucking with me. You’ve been fucking with me this whole time.” He wasn’t sure whether to be incensed or impressed at the sheer nerve of her.

She rested her chin on one hand and regarded him for a moment, wearing a crooked grin. “Crap. Busted.” 

At least she had the grace to admit it. He flushed in mortification. “I can’t believe this.”

“Not a bad improv performance, though. Must have been what got you that drama scholarship.”

“Fuck you.”

She only laughed, unmoved by his animosity. “Seriously, I’m impressed by how long you tried to pull it off. Most guys would have folded at the first volley.”

Vegeta ground his teeth together. His chest was being crushed by an enormous fist, and he pulled his crossed arms tighter to stop himself from shaking. _Idiot. You fucking idiot_ . _You should have told Nappa to go fuck himself and bailed when you had the chance._

His voice came out steadier than he expected. “And exactly when did you figure all this out, genius?” 

Before she could answer, their waitress came with the food. She laid a plate in front of him that was covered by a layer of spongy flatbread, topped with a pile of beef.

 _Raw_ beef. He’d ordered...raw beef. He made the mistake of looking up at Bulma, who was looking at him with a nakedly amused expression. _She knew that’s what I ordered, the bitch. She thinks I won’t go through with it._ His own expression hardened. Without breaking their gaze, he stated flatly, “Looks delicious.” _Fuck that. I don’t give up that easily._

He reached for his fork, only to notice they hadn’t given him one. He turned to the waitress, who noticed his confusion. “Oh, is this your first time, sir?” she asked. “You are meant to use the injera to eat,” she explained, tearing off a piece of the flatbread, expertly taking a small chunk of the meat and rolling it in a small packet. To his horror, he realized she was trying to feed it to him. _Oh,_ **_fuck_ ** _no!_ He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could make a sound she popped it in.

Surprise and embarrassment combined, he involuntarily gasped. Which was unfortunate, as the inhalation sucked a miniscule fragment of raw onion from the force-fed bite into his windpipe. The onion burned his throat and filled his eyes with water and he choked, coughing and gagging until he doubled over which at least had the nice benefit of having the table to partially hide him from the entire fucking world that was now gawking right at his stupid face. Finally, after an eternity of hacking he managed to expel the piece of onion from his trachea and he took a few painful breaths, his eyes closed. Bulma’s voice reached him, filled with a mix of hilarity and concern. “Oh my god, are you okay, Vegeta?”

 _Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just fine. I’ve only managed to make a complete idiot out of myself after being fed like a baby bird in front of the goddamn woman of my dreams, who has been playing me like a used guitar all night. An idiotic fucking guitar, that’s me._ “I’m fine,” he croaked out, not sitting up. He couldn’t quite bring himself to face her. _Maybe I can crawl under the table. Forever. Or die. That would also be fine right now._

He opened his eyes, only to see hers peering right at him from under the table where she’d bent down to meet his gaze. To his surprise, he didn’t see a trace of mockery or contempt in them, only concern. Maybe a hint of amusement. A small hint. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you. They do that for the people who haven’t had the food before, to show them how it’s done.”

He sat back up and buried his face in his palm. “All right,” he mumbled. “Fuck it, I give up. You win. I’ve never been here before. I’ve never eaten Ethiopian food, I’ve never been skydiving, I was never in a dance troupe, I don’t give a shit about maps, and I didn’t message you on any dating app.” He sighed in resignation. “So, yeah. Nice meeting you, I guess. Hope I at least provided some entertainment. I’ll get out of your hair now.”

He waited to hear the sound of her chair scraping back. Instead, he was shocked to feel a soft warmth on the back of his free hand. He raised his head. Her hand rested on top of his, and she was looking at him with a contrite expression that made his chest feel tight. “Don’t leave,” she said. “Please. I’m sorry, really.” She gave him a small smile. “Maybe we should start over. Hi, I’m Bulma.” She stuck out her hand.

Vegeta hesitated. So far tonight, he’d been blackmailed, blindsided, and humiliated in countless ways **;** maybe it was time to cut his losses. But still...her eyes were huge and beautiful and drew him like bees to honey, and her smile was genuine and kind, and she had brains and a fighting spirit and holy shit had he actually thought of her back there as the “woman of his dreams” like some fucking emo teenager? What the fuck was _wrong_ with him?

 _Hell. Why not._ “Yeah. Okay. Vegeta.” He ruefully took her hand and gave it a shake.

She smiled. “Now let's eat, before it gets cold. Unless you want to order something else? Kitfo is kind of an acquired taste.”

“Nah, it’s fine. It’s actually pretty good.” He took a bite, wrapping the raw meat in a little piece of the injera bread like she was doing. _Kind of like Mom’s kofteh._

“What’s ‘kofteh’? Is that Sadalan?” Shit. He’d said that out loud?

“Yeah. That was a long time ago, though,” he said in a voice he hoped discouraged further investigation. Luckily, she seemed to see that and dropped the conversation. They sat together, eating quietly. The silence was...comfortable, somehow. It was nice, not feeling like he had to attempt small talk. He’d never been great at small talk.

Bulma broke the silence, saying with a mischievous smile, “Hey, I have an idea. Since we started this night out by misleading each other, what say we have a bet? Tonight, we each get to ask each other ten questions that we have to answer truthfully. If you lie or refuse to answer, you have to do one thing that the other person wants.”

He scoffed, “What, like Truth or Dare?”

“Maybe a little. But if you’re not up for it…” she trailed off teasingly.

Vegeta chuckled. “What, you think I’m going to be afraid to answer your questions?”

She gave a roguish grin. “I’m pretty good at asking questions.”

Well, wasn’t she full of herself. She could stand a couple lessons in humility. And he’d never been one to back down from a direct challenge. “Sounds fine to me.”

“Good! Question one, then. Tell me about your mother’s kofteh.”

“Technically, not a question.”

“What are you, a lawyer?”

“Is that question two?” he asked with a smirk.

“Don’t nitpick, ass. Answer the damn question or forfeit.”

Oh, she was good. All right, fair enough. “Kofteh is...a kind of sausage, I guess? Spiced meat, molded around a stick and cooked. My brother and I used to help her make them, and she always got mad when I’d sneak a fingerful. She said it was unhealthy to eat raw meat. And yet, here I am.” He took another bite of his meal. “My turn. Ready to share, woman?”

She smirked. “I’m ready for anything you can throw at me, bub. And don’t call me ‘woman’.”

A wicked smile spread over Vegeta's face. Ready for anything? She had no idea of how ruthless he was willing to be. This night was looking up already.


	4. Say Anything

As fun as it was to mess with the man, Bulma was relieved to clear the air. A date that acted as if he had a gun to his head couldn’t exactly deliver the kind of gratuitous flattery she was used to. Now, at least Vegeta seemed as if he was enjoying her company… maybe too much. The grin that spread between his cheeks was downright villainous. 

“You’re a pretty girl, Bulma. That alone is more than enough to solicit pick-up lines from every Tom, Dick and Harry you pass on the sidewalk,” he stated in a tone that wasn’t so much a compliment as a starting premise. 

“A sound assumption, Aristotle. What does your genius make of it?” 

“There has to be a catch.”

“A catch? Meaning…?”

“I don’t know, stalking, delusional fantasies, a temper that can’t be trusted around kitchen knives. What’s so wrong with you that you’d resort to online dating?”

“Excuse me?” Bulma’s voice pitched. Despite knowing his provocation was intentionally dramatic, call it payback for her earlier ploy, she didn’t doubt the base of his question was real. 

In Vegeta’s outmoded little mind, the day she hit the showroom floor at eighteen, she should have been bought by some investment banker, and the fact that she was twenty-eight and soliciting test drives on a platform as plebeian as Tinder, meant that hidden under a flashy hood ornament was a lemon. 

As if on queue, he confirmed her train of thought. “No offense, but apps seem kind of desperate.” 

“Shit, grandpa, you’ve got some premium genes. You don’t look a day over thirty,” Bulma said, earning a frown. “There’s this new-fangled invention us kids call the internet. It’s a real time saver for filtering bullshit, and saves us girls from settling for high school sweethearts, or creepy bosses, or the first jackass at the bar that deems our aesthetic worthy of consideration.”

“Consideration for what, exactly?” he asked like he had an answer in mind. 

“Is that your second question?”

Vegeta ripped off a piece of flatbread and used it to scoop a gob of meat into his mouth, debating as he chewed. “Fine. I’ll cash one. When you were chatting up the walking death wish from my office, what were you hoping to get out of this?”

“An experience,” Bulma replied, matter-of-fact.

Vegeta’s expression soured; though it was difficult to tell whether he disliked her response or simply thought it insufficient. Both were plausible. He seemed old fashioned enough to detest the concept of girls cruising for one-night-stands, yet competitive enough to call a foul and demand elaboration. To be sure, Bulma offered the latter. 

“It’s human nature to gravitate toward routines. Predictable used to mean survivable. But the evolution of instinct lags so far behind society that baseless fears have become clinical phobias. I have some, same as everyone else, but I refuse to be a hostage. To me, confronting the unknown is liberating, empowering, and eventually, feels as normal as taking the subway. That scary subterranean labyrinth was my big yellow school bus, normalized back when my age was a single-digit.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Vegeta mocked. “ _Grand Central Station was my marble bus stop… therefore Tinder._ ” 

“Oh my god, the train wasn’t the point, but if you want to make it one, riding the J all the way to the airport and back is more interesting than playing pictionary with my friends and trying not to get too drunk in front of their domesticated girlfriends that don’t trust me. The hell does it matter if we coordinated a date through Tinder? All that matters is that we’re here out in the world and not home, whipping out a sadly literal Coke on Friday night and scrolling through Netflix. I’m twenty-eight, not seventy-eight. Even if I was that old, I wouldn’t waste what was left of my existence on my couch waiting for Godot.”

“Sounds like you’ve cracked the code. Nietzsche was wrong. He’s not dead; he’s a voyeur. Scream his name three times in a stranger’s bed and _boom_ ,” Vegeta said, snapping his fingers. The priggish little smirk on his face was begging for a hot bowl of stew. Bulma fought the urge to throw it at him. 

“Honestly, I think it’s a little fucked-up that my gender needs to justify close encounters with the opposite sex like the only acceptable thrill is pursuing matrimony, and we should be so lucky if one of you assholes takes a knee for a humble second to show us a diamond. What a girl like me is doing on Tinder, to be frank, is the same thing as Tom’s hairy dick. I’m having fun. If I was desperate for a shitty relationship, I’d have married my so-called sweetheart out of high school, and have nothing to show for it besides regret and stretch marks and joint custody of a couple bratty kids.”

Her date scooped another mouthful of kitfo and shrugged. “Seems we’re playing for the same team, as far as swinging bats at conventional bullshit.”

“Are we?” Bulma eyed him skeptically. “Was all the griping about desperation and dating apps a figment of my conscience?”

“ _Tch._ Don’t get carried away, woman. If you need a thrill, take-up skydiving. Chances of death are a fraction of a percent, and—going out on a limb here—but I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to contract an STD from a parachute no matter how hard you try to fuck one.”

 _Goddammit._ Bulma snorted and dropped her face to her palms, hoping to pass it off as a sneeze. As much as she wanted to be mad at him, the image he put into her head was so ridiculous, it required faking a few more before she was able to fix her expression with the kind of glare the ass deserved. 

“Egh… Sorry. Must be allergic to double standards.”

“Wasn’t implying one,” he promised with a sanctimonious little toss of his head.

“Certainly not personally, which brings up a good point. Let’s call it question number two. What’s _your_ catch, Vegeta? What’s so wrong with you that a co-worker felt compelled to take control of your love life, go so far to create you a profile, spend a week sweet-talking me on your behalf, then swindle you into showing up? ‘Cause a guy that looks like you should be belittling overeager secretaries on his way to the board room, right?”

“The modern nomenclature is Executive Assistant. And mine’s not so much an overeager pair of pumps as he is a hungover pair of loafers. Though, I’m not above admitting that like the secretaries of yore, he has great hair.”

“Way to burn your draft card. Care for a dare?”

“Hn…” Vegeta cocked his head. His dark eyes homed on her like it was a trick question. “I don’t have time to date.” 

“Funny, ‘cause I could swear you’re on one. Dare it is. Let’s see…” Bulma tapped her chin, pretending to brainstorm a task worthy of his refusal. It seemed that was all it required to spook a confession.

“Fine. I’ll rephrase. Dating is an expensive waste of time, and I’d rather consume drinks alone in my apartment than pay for them to ruin a two hundred dollar dress shirt.”

Bulma fought off the urge to snigger. Talk about delusion, the man wouldn’t have admitted to multiple dates ending via an angry woman throwing her drink at him unless he was actually convinced he was the victim of these encounters. Poor boy wasn’t a serial asshole. Any dyslexic mathematician could see that the common denominator in these situations was a pair of x-chromosomes. 

“Probably easier to rescue Tom Ford from vodka cran than doro wat.” 

“Doro what?” he sneered.

“Nevermind. So you don’t date because you don’t know how,” Bulma ventured.

“ _Tch_. I know how to get laid. I’m simply not interested in the kind of pandering bullshit dating requires. If I was, I’d have gone into politics. At least that comes with kickbacks.” 

Bulma was pretty sure that getting laid was the ultimate kickback of dating, but perhaps that was his point. Vegeta might have the intelligence, good looks and confidence required to blaze his way to Congress. But where the average Senator was a duralog whose principles crumbled with barely a hiss, Vegeta was lit like magnesium. He refused to go out, and there wasn’t enough ice left in the arctic to chill the hot, cynical mess to a bearable temperature, let alone cranberry juice cocktails or Ethiopean curry. If he was a victim of anything, it was his own uncompromising honesty. Tonight, it seemed to be working in his favor, because for someone that subsisted on compliments, Bulma found the tactless ass oddly entertaining. 

“Something tells me what most people consider basic social niceties you’d interpret as pandering bullshit,” she said.

“Depends on your definition of ‘most people.’ My last date wasn’t one drink in before she wrapped her palms around my face and demanded I sit through some very uncomfortable eye contact that wouldn’t make sense to ‘most people’ after ten strong drinks on an empty stomach.”

“Oh good lord.” He was fucking hopeless. “Some advice, Vegeta—the next time a girl slides her fingers into your hair and stares longingly into your eyes, instead of curling your goddamn lip to make her feel crazy, try kissing her.”

“Thanks, dear Bulma. Next time instead of interrupting a caller with shitty advice, try letting them finish their story.”

“Wait… don’t tell me you tried, and she denied you?” It was easier to believe that someone with his bone structure and bronzy complexion was the lovechild of Johnny Depp and a middle eastern princess than a reject. Either his last date was legally blind, or clinically insane, or maybe a lesbian with awful, overbearing parents who believed it was just a phase and forced her to go out with him. 

Vegeta was an ass, but he didn’t strike her as the kind that should be shoved away on principle. Bulma was a fair judge on such matters. Compared to the rather broad sample of men she’d dated, he was on the decent end of the spectrum. The lonely caller, despite being the Cynic of West City, was kind of cute, like a grumpy little pound puppy. If he tried, she wouldn’t let him off at just a kiss.

“Oh, it was worse,” Vegeta said. “She insisted my soul was dying behind my eyes, and lucky me, she caught it just in time. Apparently the going market rate for a self-proclaimed shaman to talk a soul down from a ledge is six-hundred-dollars for a weekend at, um…” his voice abruptly fell off, possibly over the same cliff to mumble “...at a mystical dance retreat.” 

“A dance retreat!” Bulma teased, loud enough to scatter the pigeons outside the restaurant’s window and earn a few yucks from the staff. Vegeta panicked and practically ducked below the table to hide the reddish plume on his pretty cheeks. “And here you thought dating was a waste of time and money. Six hundred bucks for your soul is a bargain, especially if the tea and tofu is all-inclusive. I wouldn’t worry about the dance ritual, considering you’re a three-title champ.”

“I hate you,” he grumbled from behind his hands.

“That’s just the dead, soulless void talking.” 

The mild note of laughter at her comment was unexpected, but it was nothing compared to Vegeta’s smile that peeped above the table—a pure, honest to god's smile that all but melted her own soul to wax her to the chair. 

Bulma felt her grip tighten around the bowl before her. She was on dates more nights than she wasn’t, and why she suddenly felt the urge to sabotage the first one that grinned at her because she earned it was disconcerting. It was possible the reason his dates ended with drinks in his face wasn’t because he was an asshole but because girls like her didn’t know how the fuck to react when a suspected asshole flipped.

He was perfectly adorable, and considering how goddamned inexperienced he was in the art of dating, the urge to throw food at him was, unfortunately, a byproduct of love and hate sharing the same subcortex. He really was a puppy whose instinct had him cowering behind furniture out of a fear of being smothered to death by her best intentions. If he was within strangling distance, she’d have snuffed the life right out of him.

“Are you done eating? We should go do something fun.” she proposed. "Like dancing?"

"You're not funny."

Vegeta tossed his napkin onto the table and any crumbs of vulnerability along with it to leave her staring at the same old grouch as before. The suggestion of a lively venture after a six o’clock dinner was obviously out of the question. Not crowds, _gasp_. He might be thirty, but his soul was old enough to be deceased. Vegeta looked like he’d rather retreat home to a recliner and a cup of pudding to catch the evening news. 

“Better than boring,” Bulma grumbled.

Interesting as the man was when he was on his game, or cute as he seemed to be when he wasn't, she was an heiress not a panhandler. If he'd rather fart out like a dud firework, she wasn't going to beg him to stay. The night was young. There was plenty of time for her to stumble into a good-old-fashioned bar encounter. 

As if he could read her mind, Vegeta took her disappointment as a challenge and found a second wind. “Fine, let's go out.”

“Seriously? You're telling me there's an after-dark activity that's Vegeta approved?”

“Well, I hear the J-Train is beautiful this time of year.”

“Ohmygod,” Bulma caught herself mid eyeroll. “What is your beef with the subway? Did the J ask you to dance?”

Vegeta didn’t react to her cheap joke and instead let her smile pitter out as his own mercilessly took form. “On second thought, I’m more in the mood for a house party. Let’s go visit your dumb friends.”


	5. Barefoot in the Park

The words had come from pure thoughtless impulse, but the result was gratifying. Bulma gaped at him, lost for words for the first time tonight, if not in her life. “You want to crash my friends' game night?” she said incredulously. “Are you serious?” 

“I’d suggest a club, but I don’t dance if there’s not a national championship on the line.” He felt a spark of satisfaction as she obviously suppressed a snort of laughter. “Come on,” he continued. “Let’s go see what you ditched for my fake profile.”

“Oh my god. Why the hell do you want to go to play pictionary with a bunch of strangers? Besides your obviously gregarious nature and general love of humanity, of course.”

He smirked. “Because I believe stick figures attempting to convey the concept of ‘petulant’ might be the modern era’s finest works of art.”

Her eyebrows furrowed and the grip on her bowl tightened again like she had mistaken it for a stress-relieving squeeze toy. She closed her eyes and took a breath as if attempting to tamp down an anti-social response. “I don’t know why I even bothered. Okay, you frustrating asshole. I’ll use number three. Why do you want to go to game night, really?”

He sat back, considering his answer and choosing his words with the care he would use in court, knowing that the wrong ones would have just as dramatically bad consequences. “Bulma, you have a brilliant mind that you have been using to run circles around me all night in a clear attempt to keep me completely off-balance. Call it entertainment. I’ve been the main event, trying to keep myself on a tightrope over a pit of tigers while you sat on solid ground pelting me with popcorn.” 

He regarded her carefully, but she showed no signs of overt antipathy at his words so far, so he continued. “I guess I want to go because the idea makes you so obviously uncomfortable. Maybe it’s payback. Maybe I'm just curious about what makes you so untrustworthy to the common domestic spouse. Or maybe...I want to see what happens when Bulma isn’t in charge of a situation.”

Her expression had not changed a millimeter. The conversational lull stretched out into the territory of “awkward” but still she made no response. Breaking the silence, he added, “Think of it this way. When you laugh with your friends about the worst date you’ve ever had, how much better will it be if they experienced me first-hand?”

That drew a smile. She sighed and shook her head. “Ugh. I am not nearly inebriated enough for this. Let’s get another drink, then...fine. We’ll go to the stupid game night.” She stood up and motioned for him to follow.

He rose. “While I’m not one to discourage excessive alcohol consumption, we do still have to get there somehow. I didn’t drive today. Although I guess we could take—”

“If you bring up the fucking J train again I’ll punch you in the balls.”

“Point taken.”

“Krillin only lives about a mile away, and it’s a nice night. But I’m changing my shoes.”

One trip to the car and one exchange of five-inch Jimmy Choos for a pair of running shoes later, Bulma led them into a small bar tucked into an alleyway. She pulled Vegeta straight to the bartender, threw down a bill, and with a wicked smile shot his direction ordered, “Two double vodka cranberries. I’m gonna need some ammo if I have to ruin a shirt.”

“Hhn. So, question three for me. Which one of those is supposed to be my test, the paying for drinks or the pink cocktail?” Vegeta asked her challenging glance.

She smirked. “Ideally both.”

“Look, I’m all for you buying drinks if you’re the one who’s demanding them. As for the other, I don’t particularly like pink but I don't think downing a shot of cranberry juice is a form of chemical castration. If you expect a scene, you’re going to have to try a lot harder.”

She reached out and played with the top button of his shirt. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll be sure to up my game.” His breath hitched at the contact and the flirty glint in her eye. _Goddammit. I have to stop underestimating her._

She chucked him on the chin. “I’ll be right back. Don’t start without me.” He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the way her hips swayed as she walked toward the restrooms. Damn woman managed to saunter in sneakers.

He felt his phone vibrate in his jacket pocket. Pulling it out, he saw the text notification and scowled.

Raditz  
  
**R:** Sup dude  
  
**V:** The fuck do you want, Raditz?  
  
**R:** Nappa told me you were on a date tonite🤣  
  
**R:** He says I gotta ask how it’s going  
  
**R:** She punch you yet  
  


_God dammit._

Raditz  
  
**R:** She punch you yet  
  
**V:** Fuck off, asshole.  
  
**R:** That’s not very nice Vegeta  
  
**R:** 🖕🏽  
  
**V:** You do remember that I’m technically your boss?  
  
**R:** Like I care  
  
**R:** Nappa says to ask if you’re still with her  
  
**R:** or if he has a meeting to schedule for tomorrow  
  
**V:** Tell him I’m still here, and that he has an ass-kicking to schedule.  
  
**R:** Good luck man  
  
**R:** 🍆🍑🤞🏽   
  


He growled and put the phone away. _Fucking children._

The drinks had arrived by the time she got back. She picked up her glass and it toward him. “Cheers. It’s your turn.”

He was pretty sure it was hers, but whatever. “Number four, huh? Hmm. What do I want to know about you?” He sat back and considered the woman in front of him. Honestly, he was burning with questions, but what specifically to ask was a conundrum. “All right, this one is boring and predictable, but I suspect it will be illuminating. What is the craziest thing you've ever done?”

“Depends on your definition. Some people would probably say going on an internet date with a taciturn weirdo would be it.”

“Nice deflection, Wonder Woman. Put down the bracelets and answer the question.”

“I tried,” she laughed. Her index finger tapped her chin as she considered. “Well, when I was sixteen I traveled the world solo looking for a magic rock.”

He blinked. _Huh. Not what I expected_. “A magic rock.”

“Technically, the Philosopher's Stone from mythology. I figured if it existed, I was smart enough to find it. It’s reputed to have the power to grant wishes.”

“Uh...huh. I take back what I said about your brilliant mind. What exactly did you plan to wish for?”

At that question she actually blushed. “It's nothing.”

Sensing weakness, Vegeta’s eyes narrowed in a predatory leer _._ “Call it number five, then.”

“Oh for...fine. I was going to wish for a boyfriend, okay?”

That actually made him burst out with a laugh. “Yeah, okay. I absolutely believe that's the craziest thing you've ever done. You did this unsupervised?”

She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “My folks have never been what you’d call ‘hands-on’, I guess.”

“I can’t believe your parents let you travel the world alone at sixteen.”

“If you can’t believe that, imagine what you’ll say when I tell you that I actually found and brought home a boyfriend and they let him move in.”

He almost choked on his drink with that one. “Are you serious? What the hell is wrong with them? What the hell was wrong with _you_?”

She scoffed. “Oh, come on. He had his own room, at least. And I was sixteen. Of course I was going to do stupid things.” She caught the roll of his eyes and shot back, “And exactly what were you doing at sixteen, Mr. Model of Responsibility?”

“If you really want to know, I was trying to learn enough English to pass high school while working thirty hours a week. And that’s four for you.”

He grinned as she stuck out her tongue. “Unfair. That wasn’t supposed to be one of my ten.”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want cashed,” he smirked.

“All right, I will grant you that helping your family pay rent is, in fact, more responsible than bringing home a virtual stranger to live in your spare room.”

“Just paying rent for myself, actually. My family didn’t make it out of the war, so I had an apartment with my ugly cousin.”

Her smile dropped like he’d slapped her. _Oh, shit. Way to bring down the mood, genius._

He waved his hand preemptively. “I know, it’s terrible, you’re so sorry, et cetera. It’s okay. You don’t need to say anything. It is what it is.”

He could see her struggling with her desire to empathize, but she quickly schooled her features into a calm acceptance. “I guess you get that a lot,” she said matter-of-factly. 

Grateful for her understanding, he nodded. Strangely, the fact that she was trying so hard not to care too much made him want to tell her more. “My dad’s friend got us out. It was me, my little brother, and our cousin, but my brother...got lost on the way. So it was just the two of us.”

Her eyes filled with a sheepish awe as she examined him. “Well, damn. Here I was thinking my little globetrot was impressive. I feel kind of lame now.” She bit her lip, the gesture making her look oddly vulnerable.

“It sounds more exciting than it was, don't worry.”

“Why were you living on your own? Did you not stay with your dad’s friend?”

“We did at first, but I can’t really blame him not wanting to keep living with two hormonal teenage refugees. Especially after the seventh time he had to bail one of us out.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You were a troublemaker, huh? What a surprise.”

“I calmed down when I found out you were allowed to hit people if you chose the right hobby.”

She reached out and traced her hand across his bicep. “Hah! I knew it. Let me guess...MMA? Or Krav Maga? Something brutal, anyway. I figured you had to get that body somehow.”

Vegeta was used to being checked out. But the touch of her hand and the feeling of her eyes moving across his body felt like he was being stripped naked. He turned his head to avoid her gaze, silently cursing the genes that made him such a fucking obvious blusher.

Clearing his throat, he tried to ignore her ogle. “Anyway, he signed a lease for us, and hooked us up with jobs at his office.”

“Sounds like he really stepped up for you.”

Vegeta turned back to her. He drank her in with his eyes, his breath catching as she brushed a stray blue lock behind her ear. He couldn’t stop a small smile curling his lip as he answered, “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I owe him a lot.” _God, he’s going to be fucking insufferable tomorrow._

He threw back the remainder of his disgustingly pink drink. “Enough stalling, woman. Time to demonstrate your skill at charades.”

That earned him a smack on the arm with her purse. “I told you not to call me ‘woman’, tough guy.”

The evening had turned to dusk when they emerged. Bulma grabbed his arm and led him across the street and into a wooded park. The air held onto the warmth of the day, and the city had hit that period of stillness between day and night. Vegeta let his date guide him down a shaded path, her arm still tucked into his. 

Bulma walked beside him with an easy gait as though she’d known him for years, and he marveled at her ability to be comfortable in virtually every circumstance. He couldn’t quite tell if she was brushing against him on purpose or accidentally, but either way a shock ran up his spine every time her side met his. Thankfully, he was able to suppress the stupid-looking-as-hell smile that wanted to pop up. At least, mostly. _This is...going well. Too well,_ he thought. He idly wondered exactly when he was going to manage to fuck it up.

Not long, it turned out. The fading light under the canopy of the trees meant that he almost missed seeing the hideous atrocity until it was too late. But the corner of his eye caught a glimpse of the monster and sent the warning to his brain, just in time. 

“ **FUCK!** ” He threw himself backward, hand held high to shield himself from attack. His feet tangled, and he landed on the grass hard enough to snap his teeth together. His heart was hammering against his sternum, his breath coming in frenetic pants. _Oh god oh god it almost landed on my face, ON MY FACE._

“Vegeta! Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Bulma asked, alarmed. She knelt down beside him, putting her hand on his shoulder. It was almost enough to distract him from the horror that had almost occurred. Not quite.

He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, trying to even out his breath and quell the nausea that threatened to ruin her Vera Wang. “It’s nothing,” he managed. “Just...that thing surprised me.”

She looked, confused. Finally, she spotted it—a tiny green caterpillar hanging from the trees by a thread of silk. “Vegeta, it’s only a silkworm. They aren’t poisonous or anything.”

He bit down on a derisive jab that rose out of the depths of his mind to camouflage the mortifying outburst. _Don’t be a prick. Not to her._ “I ...I really don’t like worms,” he admitted. “I had a...bad experience.”

She burst into laughter. “Really? Mean, tough Vegeta, who hits people for fun, is afraid of tiny worms? Okay, I have to know the story behind that one. I’m calling in number five. How did you end up with that particular phobia?”

Vegeta closed his eyes, not quite able to suppress a shudder. Memory, long buried, came unbidden—the drumbeat of boots on the floor above him, the smell of blood and death. The feeling of _things_ crawling on him, unable to move to brush them off without giving them all away.

He swallowed, pushing away the vision, and shook his head. “No. I’ll take the dare.” Bulma, with her charmed life and happy memories—she didn’t need to know that one. 

Her face grew serious and she said, “Never mind. I’m sorry. I can tell that’s not...I withdraw the question. You don’t have to answer it.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He stood up, and offered a hand to pull her to her feet. “I told you, I don’t back down. I didn’t answer your question, so you get a dare. That’s what we agreed.”

She was silent for a long moment. He was beginning to worry he’d completely shattered their easy fellowship, but then a wicked smile slowly grew on her face. She put a hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side. “Okay, tough guy. You want a dare, you got one.”

He felt a jolt of panic—what horror brewing around in that twisted brain did she have in store for him? _Doesn’t matter. I can handle it._ He raised an eyebrow, ready for anything.

Almost anything.

“Kiss me.”

Fatal system error. Does not compute. Please restart and try again.

She smirked at him, raised her hand in front of his face and snapped her fingers. “Hello? Vegeta? Am I going to have to threaten you with a dance retreat?”

Somehow, he remembered how to inhale. His heart gave a frustrated growl at having its break interrupted and laced its running shoes back up. His eyes were epoxied to her pink lips quirked in a mocking smile. He could smell a faint scent of lavender; somehow, she had gotten closer. Had she moved? Or had he?

Her teeth worried her lower lip for the briefest moment. “Come on. I thought you never backed down, tough guy.”

That broke him. He snaked his hand between her shoulder blades and pulled her in, his mouth finding hers greedily. The quiet squeal of surprise that escaped her drove any remaining thought out of his mind, and he dove into her headfirst. Everything in the world was condensed into the full lip he sucked between his teeth, the soft feathering of her tongue as it flitted against his lips. His hands found her waist and skimmed her body, her curves arching under his hands. He savored the way her arms wrapped around his neck and her fingers twined through his hair. 

Every touch spread electrically over his skin, burning itself into his brain. All the embarrassment of the evening, all the hot mess of his neuroses and self-doubt faded into the feeling of her lips eagerly moving against his as though she was as hungry as he was. Even the cynic in his head seemed content to sit back and enjoy the experience. With each passing second he swam deeper into her, without hope of ever reaching the bottom.

But like any deep diver, he eventually had to come up for air. Slowly, reluctantly, he pulled his mouth from hers, her teeth catching his lower lip in a soft bite as it left. _Holy shit. That…_

“Wow. Not bad.” Her voice was a little unstable. His was non-existent, so he just let out a shaky breath and nodded. “I’m going to have to ask you more questions you can’t answer.”

Vegeta couldn’t stop the smile that covered his face. “I told you I don’t back down.” She hadn’t pulled away and the nearness of her body dizzied him. For one moment, he floated in a bubble of contentment. But so unfamiliar an emotion was doomed. His heart plunged off the cloud it had been resting on and plummeted to the ground as he realized how incredibly, totally fucked he was.

He pulled away from her, the familiar crease returning between his eyebrows. “What is it? Is something wrong?” she asked. He couldn’t help but hear a hurt tone in her question. It might have been wishful thinking.

_I can’t do this. I can’t deal with how this is going to end._ It was time to cut out before everything went to shit. He had no idea what the hell she wanted from him, and he hated uncertainty. Especially when the stakes were this high.

_Or, and here’s a thought, you could ask her._

Huh. That was new. Usually, that voice was just calling him a fucking idiot.

_You **are** a fucking idiot. You’re planning on bailing for no reason other than you’re scared. You are afraid this is going to end badly, so you decide to end it badly. Fucking brilliant._

“Vegeta? What the hell?” Bulma’s voice definitely held a note of frustration now.

He sighed, running a hand down his face. “Look, I need to know something. Call it question six, or whatever.” He broke off, unsure how or whether to continue. “Okay, I know this might change over the night but…” He forced himself to spit it out. “Do I have any chance here? I mean, of seeing you after tonight,” he mumbled. “Because if not, I’m going to have to cut out now.”

It was out. He stood, fists clenched, waiting for the blade to drop.


	6. Down With Love

The intensity of the kiss was unexpected, nothing like the usual tongue explorations. Those were like waiting in traffic en route to a destination that didn’t promise to be any more riveting. Vegeta’s kiss was a joyride on the turnpike, shifting on the red line at full throttle with her head glued to the back of the seat before tearing down the open road. 

A little shiver swept down Bulma’s neck as she replayed it in her mind—the heat of him as he pulled her so close that she could feel his heart pounding, the softness of his lips as he sealed them roughly against her own, the way he seemed to almost forget to breathe and exhaled through his nose in a huff against her cheek without breaking away, as if determined to not let the pesky need for oxygen cut a kiss short.

Now, she kind of wished he had, because the question he’d asked, the way he was looking at her, all of it felt sickeningly familiar. 

Vegeta was right about her playing games at his expense all night. It wasn’t a habit as much as a defense mechanism, beating the boys at their own game. Bulma had gotten so good at it, she couldn’t stop herself from responding with another biting quip.

“Sounds more like an ultimatum than a question,” she told him. 

Vegeta’s mouth hardened into a thin line as he narrowed his eyes. One curt nod later, he was walking away, leaving her to stare at his back in a daze. Even knowing she didn’t want him to leave, Bulma still stubbornly, or maybe instinctively clung to manipulation as a means to make him reconsider. 

“Are you really gonna abandon a girl in a dark city park?”

“Wouldn't want to deprive you of an adventure,” he chided. 

_Egh_... She walked right into that one.

“Vegeta wait!” Her voice trilled as she ran to catch him, cursing with every stupid step because _FUCK!_ Since when did Bulma _fucking_ Briefs resort to chasing after men? Until tonight, there was just one instance, or more accurately one man and many instances, none of them worth the humiliation. It seemed she was determined to make Vegeta the only mistake she ever made twice. Grabbing hold of his wrist, Bulma planted her feet against the tar path to force him to stop and face her. 

“What?” he snapped. His head cocked sideways impatiently as she stuttered to figure out what to say. 

“I… uh… It’s not that I don’t want to see you again. I do! ... I do...” she said, like repeating the words might distill them to a simpler version of the truth.

Vegeta shifted his weight between his feet with a sigh that said he didn’t believe her either and was waiting for her to get to the fucking point. 

“I just don’t feel comfortable with relationships, if that makes sense.”

“No, not really… Never been in one,” he responded dryly.

“Well, you’re lucky. Relationships suck. They only last a year, two at best, just long enough to become dependent before you start hating each other. The next few years are nothing but repeating the same stale arguments until you hit a breaking point and one or both of you start pelting shoes across the room. Somehow scarring his face on the heel of your Jimmy Choo isn't enough to come to your senses. You’re both so afraid of upending the routine, instead of breaking up, you get drunk and talk it out, reminisce on that first year and convince yourself it’s possible to get that feeling back. It works, but the renaissance is brief. 

“One fine morning, you’re awoken mid-dream by a fucking slap when a trusted confidant regretfully texts you photo proof your dear love’s infidelity from the restaurant he brought you to for eight anniversary dinners. By afternoon, you’ve discovered it wasn’t a one-off, but a serial occurrence that had been going on for the very same eight years according to his numerous online dating profiles. The oldest one was created four months to the day you met. 

“As if the pain of betrayal, of grief, of inadequacy aren’t scarring enough, realizing you can’t get that time back is fucking brain damage. You’re never the same. You unwittingly sabotage every subsequent attempt at a new relationship because the _what-if_ switch is on now, buzzing a warning inside your skull, reminding you that you’ve already wasted too much on a charming piece of shit, and happily-ever-after is an illusion peddled by the Disney Corporation.”

Vegeta regarded her with irritation while she spoke. But the moment she stopped, his expression oddly shifted to appear almost perplexed, as if the English language had been spontaneously deleted from his head and he hadn’t understood a word. All of a sudden, he pivoted on his heels, wrapped his arm around his face and sneezed into the crook of his elbow.

Bulma was about to say “bless you” when Vegeta burst into a fit of laughter. 

_Goddammit._ That was _her_ play. She didn’t know whether to be more pissed off by his timing or that he very nearly successfully used it against her. Vegeta’s pre-sneeze was perfect, but his post-Gesundheit was awful. The man was doubled-up, crying, practically choking on hysterics. 

As the display dragged on far longer than was pleasant, Bulma recovered a nerve to reprimand him. “Seriously, asshole? What the hell is wrong with you? _You_ asked me why I don’t like relationships. I was being fucking honest.” 

“I know… I'm sorry… I just can’t. It’s too much,” he wailed, wiping the tears from his eyes, struggling to taper his amusement. “You scoured the ends of the Earth to make a wish on a petrified turd and it granted you with one. Come on, Bulma. Get real. If at sixteen, you sincerely believed your first dumbass boyfriend was going to end in happily-ever-after, then yeah… by all means, blame the Little Mermaid. But don’t act like it's a fucking Shakespearean tragedy.”

“Wow. Dick. Thanks for understanding.” 

“Oh, of all the people on the planet, I’m the most qualified for _that_ job.” He finally reclaimed control of his face, enough to appear mostly serious; though a hint of a smile still lingered at the corners of his lips. “Listen, Bulma, people are never permanent. They come and go. That’s life. Whether they do so by choice or not doesn’t make a difference. Instead of crying about it, or invoking a vendetta to make every man on earth feel this fucking small because one dipshit couldn't see what he had,” he said, pinching his thumb and forefinger, “I think you, of all people, might find moving the fuck on with yours a hell of a lot more liberating.”

 _Egh…_ As much as she hated to admit, Vegeta was right. On topics of love and loss and vengeance, he wasn’t just qualified, but overqualified to an impossible extreme considering his entire family was lost or dead, leaving him orphaned in a warzone, fleeing for his life to a foreign country. He didn’t seem bitter about his circumstances. Instead, less than two decades later, here he was, wearing a designer suit, standing in the middle of a landscape architect’s wet dream at the center of a metropolis, still humoring a spoiled brat after she’d shot down his earnest request for a second date. Assessing the situation from that context was sufficiently mortifying. It made the last hundred Tinder adventures seem like a series of misguided tantrums. 

The end game of her so-called dates depended on the person. If he was an outright douchebag, she’d play along until the timing was right to make a sudden exit, leave him blue-balled and trot off with half his clothes and a wake of curses shouted at her back. If he seemed perfectly nice, she’d follow through, do the dirty deed, then block his number the moment he fell asleep and slip out the door. Until now, Bulma was actually proud of her playbook. It was easy and predictable, and unlike a relationship, it didn’t require an emotional investment. That shit was nuclear—ten seconds to fall in love and forever to recover from the fallout.

Despite the war she’d waged on internet dates, this one was different. Maybe because he didn’t know he was one. Maybe because he was the only one so far to deduce her ploy. Vegeta figured her out in under an hour, and rather than take offense at the fact that she’d been messing with his head, he agreed, in a show of good sportsmanship, to play twenty questions.

“Christ, I feel like an asshole. Is that what dating you would be like? Whipping out the refugee card at all my first-world heiress problems?”

“Heiress, huh? No wonder you have a thing for Disney princesses. I’m guessing the Beamer was a gift from daddy?” Bulma gave a little eye-roll that he took as an invitation to heckle her further. “In that case, yeah. I’d be happy to parachute you back to reality.”

“Ha… You’d like that, would you?” Bulma grumbled.

“Depends. Are you referring to triaging non-problems or sex? Fuck it, nevermind. I’m good at both.”

Clearly, the drinks had finally caught him. Introverts were fun that way... or tragic, depending on whether or not the night's pendulum swung in their favor. Either way, drinking was a special power that unlocked their super alter egos. In the beginning, Vegeta’s behavior teetered awkwardly between self-consciousness and bravado. Now that she'd conceded to his victory, he was lapping her with snarky quips and overconfidence. 

“We’ll see about that. Unless you’d still rather ditch me here.”

“ _Tch_ … I don’t put out on the first date. Maybe the third…”

“Fine.”

“...Or tenth.”

“Oh my god!”

“What? I’m not a piece of meat, Bulma. I have some self-respect.”

“Indeed, you do. I promise I will uphold your precious self-respect when it fails you on dates two through nine… gleefully.”

“That was just an estimate. There’s a margin of error.”

“Of course,” Bulma nodded as her grip slid from his wrist to the palm of his hand. All his confidence evaporated with a whimper as she stepped into his bubble. She ran her fingers through his hair at the nape of his neck and kissed him, silky and swift. Her lips lingered just long enough to enjoy the magnetic resistance of his holding on to the very last second before she pulled them apart. 

“If you want, we can skip game night and go to your place,” she said.

As if her repertoire of low, seductive tones was an overplayed pop single, Vegeta tuned it out. He started down the path with his hand still tethered to hers like a lead rope and jerked her to his side. “Nice try, woman.”

“I’m just saying, we live in the big city. We could hit up Broadway, or catch the early show at the Comedy Cellar, and if not, there’s tons of bars in the village to wait out the late show. Most of ‘em have live bands.”

“Sounds like a solid second date. Right now, I think it’s imperative that I suss out your friends, especially now that we’re dating. Wouldn’t want ‘em to think your new boyfriend is an antisocial tool and too good for game night.”

 _Boyfriend?_ It was difficult to discern the proportion that he was mocking the term to get under her skin versus wishful thinking. If she had to guess, the motives were neck and neck. 

“Vegeta, seriously, they’re kind of square. Can you at least not act drunk?”

“I’m _not_ drunk. But if it’ll calm your flippers, then yes, lil’ mermaid. I promise I’ll walk a straight line like the soberest of terrestrial princes.”

Ugh, he was going to be a shitshow. Not because he was a lightweight, tossed overboard by one, albeit heavy-handed, vodka cranberry. But because he was sauced enough to make-believe he was personable, and vindictive enough to ensure she'd rue denying him a second date. Clearly, laughing at her attempt to explain her reasons for it, dubious as he proved them to be, wasn't sufficiently humiliating.

Bulma tepidly led the wildcard out of the park and up a few short blocks to the stoop of Krillin’s apartment, smiling at him nervously as she pressed the buzzer. 

Krillin’s voice chirped over the intercom. “That was fast.”

“That’s what she said,” Bulma sniggered.

“Oh hey, Bulma! Thought you were Goku.” A smatter of background chatter broke in and out over the line before her friend shushed them. “Guess the date was a bust huh? I’ll let you up.”

A shrill buzzer cut the comm’s static, and Vegeta eagerly wrenched the door open. He jogged up the stairs ahead of her like he knew where he was going, only to have Bulma call the idiot back down from the third floor landing to follow her down the hallway on the second story. 

“Is there some middle ground between loud, tipsy Vegeta and shy, surly Vegeta?” she asked as they stopped in front of Krillin's apartment.

“I’m not gonna lie, Bulma. That narrow window closed back at the park. You get what you got.”

She feared as much. Granted, Vegeta was far more palatable to the general public after a few drinks, but he was far less predictable. At least sober, she could count on him frowning in silence, tuning out her friends’ attempts to disentangle her life choices to stare blankly at the coffee table and, at worst, insert an occasional off-color comment. Now, he seemed emboldened enough to instigate such discussions. Her fist hovered an inch off the door as she took a deep breath, and finally rapped her knuckles against the pane. 

“If you embarrass me in front of my friends, our second date will be your funeral.”

Vegeta chuckled lowly and wound an arm around her shoulders. His lips nipped her ear as he muttered, “You should know better than to tempt me, woman.”


	7. Me and You and Everyone We Know

The guy who opened the door looked like he came from some sketch comedy. He was about four feet tall, bald as an egg, and had no nose whatsoever.

Okay, that was an exaggeration. He was at least 5’2”, and he did have a nose. A small one.

“Hey, Bulma! Glad you could—eep!” He cut off as he spied Vegeta. “Oh! Uh. Okay. Hi. I’m Krillin. Bulma?"

Bulma sighed. “Hey, Krillin. This is Vegeta. We decided...uh...” She looked at Vegeta.

He could tell that, as she had pointed out, he was obnoxiously inebriated at this point. The double vodka on top of the beer and the...four? five? scotches he’d had at the bar before dinner was bad enough, but he recognized this particular feeling as an adrenaline comedown. He always felt like this after a fight; like he’d survived disaster yet again and was still alive, goddammit, on top of the world and undefeatable. He wasn’t yet sure whether he wanted to try to reel it in for Bulma’s sake, or enjoy seeing her twist. She’d shown her belly to him, and he was riding the high of the realization that maybe, finally, he’d met someone just as fucked up as he was.

He put on his best smile—well, the best he could muster right now—and spoke with an exaggerated joviality. “Hi, Krillin! Bulma was heartbroken at accidentally double-booking tonight. It was bringing her down so much that I suggested we come over anyway. Hope you have enough room.” He walked into the apartment without waiting for an answer, the Baldy only gaping at him as he passed.

Sitting on the couch were two women who were incredibly unimpressed by their arrival. The dark-haired one looked scandalized and angry; the ice queen blonde just looked vaguely scornful. _Whatever. Fuck ‘em._ Next to the blonde was a man, obviously related and, to his amusement, just as obviously checking him out.

Bulma followed him in, shrugging in apology to her friend. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her take a deep breath and straighten her back slightly. _Good for her._ If he was making her do this, she was going to do it well. 

“Vegeta, this is Chi-Chi,” she gestured to the dark-haired woman, “and Krillin’s girlfriend Eighteen and her brother Seventeen.”

The blonde woman, obviously anticipating the remark on his tongue, said, “They’re nicknames, it’s a long story, and yes, it’s better than our real names.” _Hn_. This one was trouble.

Vegeta smirked and obnoxiously threw an arm over Bulma’s shoulder, earning an eye roll which he ignored. “Great to meet you. Bulma’s been raving about how amazing you guys are all night.” That earned him a subtle but insistent elbow in his ribs.

Bulma was attempting desperately to shift the conversation. “Chi-Chi, where’s Goku?”

She answered, a little stiffly. “He went on a beer run, and to go get some food. Hopefully he remembers to bring some back for us.”

There was a painfully awkward silence. Everyone seemed unsure of what to do, and were either staring at him or very obviously not looking. The adrenaline was wearing off, and the drinks were making themselves known in a different way. At least that gave him an escape route. “Bathroom?” he asked his host.

“Down the hall to the left,” Krillin replied. 

Vegeta was starting to wonder what he’d gotten himself into. He’d been so interested in throwing Bulma for a loop that he hadn’t really thought about the fact that he’d be thrown right along with her. _Sure, let’s go to the home of total strangers that probably are going to hate me. This was a brilliant plan._ After washing his hands, the silence created by turning off the tap revealed that the wall to his left not only was shared with the living room, it was also surprisingly thin. The voices of Krillin and Bulma came through, only slightly muffled. Vegeta only hesitated a moment before listening intently.

“So.”

“So?”

“You’ve never brought one around before.”

“Look, it wasn’t my idea. It just...sort of happened.”

The sound of a sigh. “Bulma...seriously? Bringing one of your internet dates here? What do you even know about him?” Vegeta frowned. _Does this guy think I’m going to steal his TV or something?_

Her voice was taut. “God, Krillin. You act like I picked up a homeless junkie on the street. I may not have known him that long, but if you’re really that concerned, I’ll replace anything he steals to hock for smack, okay?” _Hah. Great fucking minds._

“That’s not what he means, Bulma.” That was the ice queen. “But it’s one thing if you want to run through guys like single-use chopsticks. Are we going to have to start remembering names every night?”

There was a silence. Then Baldy again. “Wait a minute. Bulma? Is this...are you actually interested in this one? Like, for more than just a chew toy?” Suddenly Vegeta was paying very close attention. 

Another silence. “I—maybe. I haven’t decided. He’s...different. But I really don’t have the time or patience for dealing with relationship bullshit.” She sighed. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled as though she was speaking through her hands. “God, all I wanted tonight was dinner with a nice view and maybe a little dessert.” She ignored a disapproving interjection from Krillin. “I was having fun with my life. I never wanted things to get..." She sighed again. "Complicated.”

“Bulma, I don’t mean to be nagging, really. I’m happy you’re maybe ready to start taking things seriously again. But you’ve known this guy for what, three hours? We all care about you, y'know? We don’t want you to get hurt again. So don’t go jumping off a cliff on impulse, okay? Just...be careful.”

“I don’t know, Krillin.” Surprisingly, the angry brunette—Chi-Chi—was the one to respond. “When Goku‘n me were dating, everyone thought I was crazy when I proposed to him a month after we met. Maybe it’s worth jumping off a cliff once in a while.” Vegeta instantly liked her a thousand times better.

The conversation paused. _Shit, I’ve been in here forever._ He quickly gave a flush to cover, then walked back to the living room. Bulma looked up, a guilty look on her face. He tried not to meet her eyes. He couldn’t be sure what looking at her face would do to him at this point.

He pulled up the coat of bravado that usually managed to mask his awkwardness, and threw on a confident smile. “So, Bulma promised me a game night. What are we playing today? Parcheesi?”

The Baldy—Krillin—said, “Oh, um. We were just about to start a game of Monopoly, actually.”

His fake smile transformed into a predatory grin _. Oh, hell yes_. These guys had no idea what they’d just gotten themselves into. 

Two hours later, Krillin nervously moved the little metal dog across the board. “...four, five. Ah, dang.” He flinched, nervously rubbing the back of his neck.

“Oooh, bad luck.” Bulma sucked a breath in with mock sympathy. “Okay, Park Place. With a hotel, plus the principal and interest for the cash we lent you last time you’re looking at...45,000.” 

“Forty-five thousand?” exclaimed Krillin. “What the heck kind of interest rate did you agree to?” he asked his partner incredulously.

Chi-Chi shrugged nervously. “They said a rate of .45% a turn! I didn’t think that was so bad?”

Vegeta shook his head. “Sorry, I think you didn’t read it close enough.” He waived the cocktail napkin with her signature. “It actually says a rate of point-four-five. That’s 45%.”

“Oh my god.” Krillin grimaced. “That’s murder, you monster!”

“Next time, don’t go to the can during contract negotiations.” Vegeta shrugged. “But if you don’t have the cash, I guess we can accept your property at Pacific Avenue for the remainder.”

Krillin sighed. “Welp, we’re busted out.” He stood up. “I’m going to get another beer.”

“Sorry, Krillin!” Bulma shouted after him. “Except not actually, at all!”

Vegeta grinned wolfishly as he turned to the blonde. “Okay, it’s your turn, Ruthless Bitch.”

“Bulma, your date is flirting with me again,” she said with only a small curl of her lip defying her deadpan delivery.

Vegeta grunted as Bulma’s elbow landed in his side. “She’s got a boyfriend, asshole.”

“I just appreciate a decent opponent. No one’s ever had more than a quarter of the board after playing me for this long before.”

Eighteen nodded in acknowledgement. “I can see the writing on the wall though. Listen, we could keep going and you guys would win eventually, but I promise I’ll make it as painful as possible. Or we can skip the war of attrition and I’ll sell you everything for ten million.”

“And a yacht,” her brother piped up.

“A yacht?” asked Eighteen.

“I’m going to take my share and sail the world. Find a deserted island. Protect the wildlife.”

“God, you’re such a dork.”

“Ten million and a yacht it is. Sold!” Bulma threw out her hand for a shake to seal the deal.

Vegeta turned to her. “Dammit, woman! I could have talked them down to five.”

“You should move faster during contract negotiations,” she mocked. 

He couldn’t help a laugh at that one. “Using my own weapons against me. Underhanded.” He got up. “You want another drink?”

She nodded and he headed to the kitchen. The room was empty as he bent down to grab a pair of bottles from the fridge. 

“Hey.” 

He turned at the sound of her voice. Bulma was leaning against the doorway, watching him. She gave a half-smile that forced a clone onto his own face. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For tonight. All of tonight. I haven’t had this much fun in years.” She walked over to him, grabbing his hand. “I hope it hasn’t been too much torture for you.”

He laughed softly. “I guess it’s been okay.” _Should I? Yeah, let’s try._ He pulled her closer and put a hand on her hip. She didn’t pull away.

“Right,” he whispered. “Time to cash in number eight.”

She gave a small laugh. “Ask away.”

He stared at her. She was strange. Crazy. Skittish and afraid of feeling anything. Probably end terribly. Probably a better idea not to get involved. But he had an idea that no matter how explosive, no matter how badly the end might be...he wanted it. He wanted the whirlwind, the crazy, the explosions. Maybe this was a cliff worth jumping off. Who knows? Maybe...maybe, there was a net at the bottom. 

“Am I a complication? Or do you think, possibly, that I could be an experience?” One corner of his mouth curled in a small smile. “I’m probably not as scary as the subway. But more interesting than Netflix.”

Her eyes dropped, but she smiled. She thought for a moment, then lifted them again. “If you think you can rival the J train, you’re on, tough guy.” With that, she reached her hand to his cheek and leaned slowly toward him.

Every muscle in his body was like an overstretched rubber band as he moved his body toward her. His breath was coming in shallow gasps; he felt like he was fucking sixteen again and alone with a girl for the first time. Her eyes, as vast and devastating as the ocean, threatened to overwhelm him until he foundered and went under. He pushed down a wild urge to run, fast and far away from the danger of falling into her again as their lips finally met. 

The hunger and need that he’d felt at the park was softened by a sweetness he wasn’t used to. She pressed into him with a strange insistence, as though he were holding something important that she needed. He tried his best to provide it. As the kiss deepened, she shifted from a quest to a pursuit. She chased her something as she wandered further from home. Her hands began moving from his neck downward, stroking his back, grabbing his hips. She began to push her body into his, causing a wave of electricity to shoot up his spine. Regretfully, he pulled back.

“You’d better stop, Bulma,” he smiled ruefully. “These pants are slim-cut.”

She smiled, but didn’t pull away. “Question nine, tough guy. If I asked you to take me home right now, what would you say?” she breathed into his ear.

He knew two things: One, if she asked him to, he would take her to his apartment, tear that fancy dress off her body, and proceed to have the best goddamn night of his life. And two, when he woke in the morning she’d be gone and he’d never see her again. He knew it well; God knew he’d used the same fucking playbook tons of times. But the thought of it happening with _her_...hurt. Even so, no matter the consequences, he knew he didn’t have it in him to say no if she asked. He answered only with a soft grunt; it seemed to be enough to signify his intentions.

She smiled gently. “Too bad. That’s going to have to wait until the second date. What are you doing Friday?”

He raised his eyes to meet hers. The sincerity in them nearly made him want to cry. Was it possible, after everything tonight, after all she’d said and all he’d done, that she really wanted this? To see him again? Was she really willing to hold his hand while they plunged off the cliffside to find out what was at the bottom?

He leaned in, marveling at the way she parted her lips in invitation. “Bulma-”

“Oh, hey, guys! Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt!” A way-too-cheerful voice broke in from the kitchen doorway. Vegeta looked up to see a tall man with ridiculous hair holding a shopping bag.

Wait. No. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

It crashed on him all at once. Goku. They’d been talking all night about this “Goku” and all the time they meant Kakarot. Fucking Kakarot. Fucking “My-Friends-Call-Me-Goku” Kakarot Son. Fucking “Gosh-I-Can’t-Believe-I-Made-Valedictorian-Instead-Of-You” Kakarot. Fucking Goddamned “That-Was-A-Great-Closing-Argument-Vegeta-Better-Luck-Next-Time” Fucking Kakarot. Why the name hadn’t been familiar from the beginning was probably due to Vegeta’s personal mission to never, ever, think of the complete oaf as anything even approaching a “friend”.

“Oh! Hey, Vegeta!” Apparently the recognition was mutual. The idiot was grinning like a fucking monkey, but it slipped slightly as he looked between him and Bulma. “Uh, oh, wow. Bulma. I, um, I would never get into your personal life but…” He seemed weirdly uncomfortable. _What, not good enough for your friend, am I, Kakarot?_

“It’s just, I kinda wish you’d run this past me, y’know? It’s a little weird to see you dating Vegeta Arkayazn. Considering the whole Namek thing, with the takeover and all.”

Wait. Takeover thing? What—

_Oh God. Oh my fucking God. Bulma. As in Bulma FUCKING BRIEFS._

His eyes pulled wide. The woman he’d just been considering as his possible fucking girlfriend was Bulma Briefs. Daughter of the CEO of Capsule Corporation. Heir to the goddamn company he’d recently attempted to acquire for PTO Enterprises “by any means necessary,” as his orders had stated. He turned to look at her and immediately wished he hadn’t. _Oh. Fuck._

Anger was baking off of her. Her brow had twisted into a furious glare as she looked at him the way she’d regard a fucking bug that dirtied her pristine windshield.

“Arkayazn. Well shit, if that’s not a familiar name. Signed to all those lovely legal threats for the last six months.” Her voice was low, deceptively calm. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe _you_. And I fucking fell for it. I can’t believe I fell for a GOD-DAMNED honeypot.”

She laughed darkly. “Oh, you are good, though. I honestly was buying that cute ‘awkward nerd’ thing you had going on—” _Wait, awkward nerd? Seriously?_ “—but sorry, Vegeta. It looks like Lady Luck finally threw that drink in your face.”

“Wait, that's not-”

“Couldn’t manage the stock buyout, so you sniff around to try again. What’s the plan this time? Blackmail? ‘Sell to us or these nudes of your daughter make the front page’? Hoping to find some dirty family secrets? Or were you just trying to suss out if I could be an inside source?”

With that, she drew back her hand and gave what was, honestly, a pretty good punch to the gut for someone her size.

Vegeta couldn’t help it. Despite the pain in his gut and the ache in his chest, he burst out laughing. It boiled up, spilling out of him like the fucking fake lava in some kid’s volcano science project. Every attempt to tamp it down simply made him cackle harder, like trying to put a thumb over a fire hose. He convulsed like a madman, caught in inexhaustible hysteria, barely able to even breathe. It was so overwhelming that he nearly missed it when the anger on her face suddenly dropped, leaving only hurt and disappointment. Silently, she spun on her heel and stalked out.


	8. 10 Things I Hate About You

Bulma retreated through the living room, ignoring the unutterable shock on her friends' faces as she ducked out the front door and slammed it shut. The sanctimonious little church choir would no doubt spend the rest of the night singing from the _‘told ya so’_ hymnal behind her back. Perhaps she deserved it. Call it karma for the unnumbered dates she’d cruelly toyed with for entertainment.

The shrewd artistry of Vegeta’s game made hers seem like a kindergarten finger painting. She fell for it every step of the way—his standoffish demeanor at happy hour, the adorable way he endorsed all the ridiculous details she invented from an imaginary chat, his good sportsmanship when he realized it was bullshit and still agreed to play twenty questions. Gods, she even believed the little refugee had a bad case of PTSD triggered by caterpillars, and an even worse case of arrested development with how he blushed at a kiss dare like a twelve-year-old then stormed off in a tantrum because that kiss didn’t make her his girlfriend.

He must have hired people to profile her. He probably had a dossier on his desk thick as a bible, pointlessly psychoanalyzing her every action on and offline, and was bummed when he read its four-word executive summary. _’Swipe right on Tinder’_ wasn’t enough of a challenge for the arrogant prig. He had to go the extra mile to torment her personally. Either that or he didn’t think the threat of character assassination would be enough without Bulma’s emotional investment. Had Goku not outed him, he’d have bluffed her for weeks, maybe months, before showing his hand.

Anger, hurt, humiliation welled-up in her chest as she bolted down the block. Her throat felt tight, and her eyes prickled and burned, trying and failing to hold back tears. Bulma searched her purse for something, anything to wipe the stupid gobs of mascara that irritated them worse, when all of a sudden, a car horn bleated loudly at her side. She ripped her attention from her bag just in time to jump out of the way of oncoming traffic back to the curb. The honking cab that was forced to jerk around her nearly side-swiped a car in the next lane and set off a discordant chain of horns and curses.

“Dumb fucking slut!” the cabbie berated through his open window.

Bulma stared blankly after him, her mind too frazzled to issue a comeback realizing she’d almost just walked into traffic. Being struck by his car would’ve probably stung less than that slur. The unfriendly eyes of pedestrians that passed by or stood perched on the opposite corners crawled over her skin, taking the cabbie at his word.

Gods, if only she could teleport home. She’d slam dunk this stupid little dress into the dumpster from her bathroom window, maybe try to salvage what remained of her dignity soaking in a hot tub of bubbles with a bottle of wine, vanilla candles and Beyoncé blaring over the speakers. She’d delete fucking Tinder, that was for damn sure. Then she'd hibernate under a mountain of decorative pillows until the invention of artificial sperm made the cocky dick brigade superfluous accessories.

A cab would be lightyears faster than the train, not to mention dark and private. But the slight from the one that almost ran her over kind of sacked her confidence. The fucking assholes hated crossing the river, and she was in no mood to charm one into doing just that. Even with puffy eyes, smeared makeup, and what was apparently a hooker’s ensemble, nobody would give her a second glance below ground.

Bulma jogged down the steps and swiped her Metrocard at the turnstile. As she wound through the station’s narrow tunnels, she almost regretted walking a few extra blocks to the hub at Canal Street to avoid a transfer. All the lines were slow this time of night, and the idea of pacing up and down the platforms of two trains seemed less productive than her feet’s fast clip at ground level, but compared to the ringing in her head, the screech of subway brakes was welcome noise.

No sooner did she reach the platform when, almost as if summoned, the headlights of an eastbound train appeared, followed by the disgusting whoosh of warm, damp air as it hurled to a stop.

* * *

Vegeta desperately tried to escape the grip of hysteria but the laughter just kept coming and coming. _Oh, this is perfect. This is just the most fucking perfect thing ever. Did you really think things were just going to go **well**? Of course things were going great; how else was fate supposed to really shit on you?_ He was almost doubled up, struggling to draw breath. Bulma was right. Luck had really fucked him over this time. Of all the women in the city, he’d managed to be paired with the one who had a fantastic fucking reason to hate him. And luck it had to be. Nappa wasn’t stupid enough, or cruel enough, to have set this up on purpose; no, it was the goddamned universe deciding it was about time to kick him in the balls again.

Finally he managed to get himself under control. He stood up, panting and wiping the water from his eyes. He thought of the stricken look on her face just before she left, and that sobered him up fast. _Fuck._

Okay. No. You know what? Maybe fate did have it in for him. Maybe it did like playing him, making him dance like a trained fucking monkey and laughing when he got pelted with rotten tomatoes. He was used to that; he accepted it, brushed it off and kept going. But this was different. She was different. If fate wanted to dangle her in front of him and then yank her away, if it planned to use her as some freakish torture device just to keep his life as fucking awful as he was accustomed to, then _fuck_ fate _._ Fate could go screw itself and find a new plaything, because he was goddamned if he was going to let her get away without a fight.

Krillin came into the kitchen, rubbing his head in confusion. “Hey, what’s going on? Why did Bulma just run out, Goku?”

“I—Uh, I don’t know. You okay, Vegeta?”

Ignoring both Baldy and the idiot, Vegeta pushed passed them and practically flew out the door. When he got down to the street, he frantically scanned for her blue hair. She was on foot, she couldn’t have gotten far, right?

Then where the fuck was she? Left. Right. Nothing. _Goddammit. Goddammit!_ Which way could she have gone? There was a fifty-fifty shot. He closed his eyes. _Okay. Whatever bastard’s in charge of fate, you fucking owe me one._ He turned left and ran down the block.

Reaching the corner, he scanned the cross street, swearing at the number of people who apparently suddenly decided to go for a fucking evening stroll. He jumped, trying to peer over all the heads and cars. _Yes! There she is._ Just a flash of blue, disappearing down a set of stairs into a subway station.

He ran, weaving around the entire population of the city that was determined to get in his goddamned way. Down the stairs, and there was her blue hair again, thank the gods. He got ready to hop the turnstiles to shave a few seconds, but stopped just in time. _Fuck!_ They just had to have the fare police out tonight? He had to stop, dig out his pass, swipe the goddamn turnstile. Four times. He snarled in frustration, then sped through when the fucking thing finally worked. _Where did she go?_

He spotted her again, going down to the platform for the...he almost burst out laughing when he saw the sign for the fucking J train. As he sprinted down the steps, jumping over them two at a time, his heart leapt in panic. The doors were closing. _No no nonono..._ He gave one last burst of speed, throwing out a hand just in time to trip the safety and re-open them long enough to slip inside.

He swayed, hand catching a pole as the train pulled away from the platform. The car he was in was surprisingly full for the time of night—a group of men and women in suits loudly bitching about Steve in HR, a perky goth teen with a sketchpad, a sleeping homeless woman wrapped in twelve layers of clothes—but no Bulma. He blatantly disregarded the sign telling him that switching cars would subject him to a two-hundred-dollar fine, and opened the door to the gangway.

Next car was even worse; a bachelorette party was on its horrible way somewhere. Vegeta ignored the screeching and the catcalls from the drunk women in penis-shaped sunglasses, scanning futility for Bulma. Nothing. He moved on to the next, and the next, and the next.

He had just come to the awful realization that there was every chance she hadn’t even gotten on this fucking train, when he finally spotted her. She was sitting near the center doors, her body slumped over and her head in her hands. His chest squeezed tightly, seeing her looking so...defeated. He had to fix this. He had to make her understand. He had to bring back that cocky opponent that had been ten steps ahead of him all night, or he was going to hate himself forever.

He just had no fucking clue how.

* * *

The train sped through dark tunnels, swaying gently side to side. Its motion was soothing, maternal in a way once Bulma closed her eyes to the fluorescent headache inside the car. Had they always been this bright? Or was the universe just determined to make her as miserable as humanly possible? She hadn’t been in a tanning bed since middle school, but she was pretty sure they were a storage room bulb on a chain in comparison. Maybe tomorrow she’d submit a public petition to the city’s transit authority, throw around the term ‘light torture’. Honestly, a cheap LED imitation of tungsten would be more bearable, not to mention more flattering.

_Ha, because that was the problem inherent in her current appearance... poor lighting._ She laughed sullenly at the thought. Right now, the film industry’s greatest gaffer would struggle to make her look like less of a trainwreck.

There were only a handful of passengers in the car, but Bulma didn’t dare lift her smeared mess of a face from her palms or they'd assume she was drunk. If they were the same brand of asshole she was when the shoe was on the other foot, they’d entertain themselves with hypothetical backstories. Perhaps she was a sloppy party girl who got tossed from The Box for clawing out the hair extensions from her cheating boyfriend’s sidepiece. Or some gullible mistress who assumed dinner at ABC Kitchen could possibly mean he was leaving his wife when it meant the opposite. Stooped over like this didn't exactly scream sober either, but it sure beat making eye contact.

_Ugh_... maybe she should move to another country, retire at twenty-eight and embrace her trust fund. Was that really so shameful? At the very least, she deserved a long vacation. In the past five years, the extent of her trips outside this godforsaken city were boardroom to boardroom. Her father was asleep at the wheel as he neared retirement, and she was an amatuer. Quite frankly, she wasn’t all that committed when it came to the business side of her family’s enterprise. Her niche was in research and development, not squabbling among shareholders.

The subterfuge among the minority of them was nearly successful because of the fact. The only reason the little Napoleon she wasted her night with failed his coup d'état was thanks to a few measly shares he couldn’t usurp on his employer’s behalf to push them over the edge. Perhaps that’s what he was after, the identity of the holdout that fucked him. It would’ve made for some pretty conspicuous pillow talk even if Bulma knew.

All their trusted family friends who had investments in the company were accounted for, down to drunken uncles who’d wager them in a poker game, and her dad’s college roommates who’d trade them out of spite. The majority of sales came from their big bank investors who bundled Capsule’s stock with a dozen other enterprises and sold them to the highest bidders. All the buyers turned out to be shell corporations that amassed under one Proprietary Trade Organization. The skeezy company was known for gobbling up successful businesses in the tech industry, then dismantling them and auctioning off their patents.

As it turned out, the PTO’s litigation was headed by a jackass attorney called V. Arkayazn. He’d been harassing Capsule for months, trying to throw weight around their operations, hoping he could sink their stock just long enough to spook a few more shares into the PTO’s hands and take control. He didn’t need much. Three percent was all that separated them from her family’s majority stake.

Thank gods Goku arrived, just in the nick of time, before Bulma fell tits first into Vegeta’s trap. She made a mental note to send her friend a gift. Maybe front row tickets to whatever was the UFC equivalent of a Super Bowl. Maybe she could get him a meet and greet with Conor McGregor. Hell, in that case maybe she’d tag along. While she didn’t know shit about the sport, she had a deep appreciation for its participants, or at least the packages they came in.

The second she finally landed on a pleasant reverie to replace tonight's shitshow, it was just her luck to have it disrupted by some douchebag's sinus drainage, clearing his throat above her for attention.

Bulma groaned into her palms, “Unless you’re an MMA title champ, kindly move the fuck along.”

“Tall order. Would you settle for a hobbyist?”

“Oh, _hell_ no!” Bulma lurched to her feet at the voice. _He fucking followed her?_ What could he possibly think that could accomplish? Vegeta’s posture slumped against the pole as if he was asking himself the same question.

“The hell is wrong with you?” she demanded to know.

“A lot, but if you’ll just let me expl–”

“Not interested.” Bulma cut him off with a toss of her hair and bolted toward the back of the car.

His explanation would no doubt come straight out of a predictable script for some cheesy rom-com. He’d tell her he was a bad man who didn’t anticipate his ill-intentioned scheme would be upended by love, and now he recognized the error of his ways. If only she’d give him a chance, they could hold hands on horseback and gallop off into the sunset as the credits rolled. _Barf._ It was horseshit, and she’d be stupid to listen.

All she wanted to do was get as far away from the man as possible, depart at the next stop and disappear. Short of blipping out of existence, the only outcome she’d settle for where Vegeta was concerned was him reverting back to what he was before tonight—an ugly signature at the bottom of threatening letters she fed to a paper shredder.

Bulma anticipated the overcompensating narcissist might refuse to accept defeat and chase after her like her neighbor’s yippy little shih tzu. What she didn’t expect was Vegeta snatching her wrist out of the air to roughly yank her toward him. A shriek shot from her throat and ricocheted inside the car's steel walls with the clangor of a popping bullet. Before she could retract it, tone down her public display of dramatics, a mammoth, ruddy-haired passenger had already bolted from his seat to answer the call. Vegeta’s eyes bugged as wide as her own as he took in the giant that glowered two feet above their heads.

“I think it’s best you leave the lass alone,” the man suggested. While his Irish accent imbued a polite, almost gentlemanly disposition, the warning was clear.

Vegeta glanced at Bulma sideways, probably hoping she’d come to his rescue. When she didn’t, the walking deathwish puffed-up his posture and tisked, “Thanks for the advice, Mr. Potatohead, but the _lass_ has a mouth, not to mention an uppercut that can speak for itself.”

_No no no no._ He was so stupid! His opponent looked like a South Bend mascot on vacation in New York. Conor McGregor's Frankenstein monster. A colossal freak in sweatpants, cracking his knuckles before a man whose suit was probably tailored for his petite five-and-a-half foot frame.

Bulma squealed again as she tried to leverage Vegeta’s hold on her wrist to jerk him from the path of the man’s heavy hook, but she was too late. The Irishman was quick. His fist collided into Vegeta’s face with a sickening, squelching sound that made her instantly regret her dinner.

Bulma caught the fool in her arms. Her tennis shoes screeched against the subway floor as she stumbled backward trying to counter his momentum that nearly took her down with him. Every curse known to man began to flood Vegeta’s mouth. He fought to scramble to his feet, but she quickly launched herself at the featherweight to nail him to the bench and ordered him to “Sit the fuck down!” before he got any bright ideas.

“ _Ach!_ Am I bleeding?” Vegeta uncapped his face to find the answer to his question dripping down his chin into his palm. “ _Egh, gross._ It’s in my mouth.”

The good samaritan that struck him looked a bit bewildered as he watched Bulma play cut man to the dipshit. He glanced hesitantly toward the lights above the doors that blinked as the train screeched up to the platform. “Sure you’re alright, miss? This is my stop.”

“Yeah, I’m fine," she sighed. "He’s only a danger to himself.”

“Oh, I’d make you into mashed potatoes if it wouldn’t piss _her_ off,” Vegeta called at the man’s back.

Good lord, he was delusional as the shih tzu. Bulma was almost impressed, and not just because his little-big-man dysmorphia gave him such confidence to bark at a pit bull. It took a special kind of hubris to make shit talk, especially the bigoted variety, sound like a kinky pick-up line.

“Damn, Vegeta. You’d be a hit on Grindr.”

“The fuck is that?” he sneered.

Christ, he knew nothing about the internet. Bulma tried not to smile too hard as she lied, “Another dating app. Mostly for gym rats.”

“There’s dating apps for people who like the gym?”

“Yep. You should definitely join it.”

Vegeta curled his bleeding nose in protest. “No thanks,” he said a bit dejectedly as he used the back of his hand as a Kleenex.

“Why not?”

“Because pre-screening dates feels like unnatural selection. It’s disturbing. My parents had nothing in common besides hot tempers.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point.”

Vegeta redirected his scowl from the subway floor to her with a shake of his head. “No that’s _my_ point. She was an artist; he was a politician. They shared zero interests and agreed on nothing, and yet, they were perfectly happy together. What kind of algorithm would have predicted that?”

“I dunno. But it’s kinda sweet your parents are your yardstick.”

If Bulma was being honest, sub fiery tempers for space cadets, her parents were an equally good metric. But it was a different era, for her mother especially. The woman was raised to become a professional housewife, not a CEO. The wave of feminism in the seventies where she came of age crashed silently over her head. She wasn’t a victim of the patriarchy, but rather a fangirl of simplicity. She was a time capsule from the fifties whose passions were baking, and hair salons, and day drinking in high heels and fit-flare dresses.

Bulma was the opposite. Sure, she dolled up for dates and did plenty of drinking after hours, but her day-to-day ensemble was a pair of coveralls, thick soled boots, goggles, and buffalo leather gloves. Tinder was an alias. She didn’t even use her real surname. But in this day and age, it was a far better vetting process for dates than meeting one in real life. Not that they could really be considered dates. Perhaps marks. Regardless of what they were, Tinder worked.

The guys that pretended to be serious were the ones she swiped right to meet, just to fuck with their inflated egos and ruin their night. It was a public service that might make them think twice before luring some poor girl into false hope before ghosting her the next morning. Vegeta fit the profile on paper. In reality, he was too strange to conform. His ego was the pitiable kind, overcompensating for a severe lack of confidence. While she didn’t believe the asshole as far as his ulterior motive with her was concerned, she believed the lonely boy’s reverence for his long lost family was true and could understand why he made them his touchstone.

“Still... I hate to break it to you, Vegeta, but if what you say about your parents is true, they’re outside the bell curve. Dating apps are actually a pretty good litmus test for compatibility.”

“Bullshit. We’re here because of my gym selfie. Even if my profile was actually mine and not manufactured by a third party, you wouldn’t have read it. And if by chance, you did, what the hell would my favorite movie have to say about compatibility? Name one fucking couple that shares the same one. It’s not a litmus test, it’s garbage.”

“Well clearly, this example is garbage. If you’d believe it, tricking one, very specific girl into a date is abusing the system. It’s not just a violation of Tinder’s terms and conditions. It’s both a state and federal level no-no called extortion. And I’m fairly certain it won’t look so good for your employer to be implicated in that sort of thing.”

The hand Vegeta had been using to clot his nose fell slack into his lap as his eyes drew wide. “I swear to gods, Bulma, I wasn’t trying to trick you! A half hour ago, I didn’t know who you were. Now that I do, and you pointed out the glaring conflict of interest, I’m uh… shall we say, _unsettled..._ I know it must seem very obvious that this was some kind of plot, but–”

“Ha, obvious, huh?” Bulma interrupted him with a hollow laugh. “You know what’s even more obvious, Vegeta? That your opinion of me is so goddamn low, you think I’d still buy your stupid not-on-Tinder-my-coworker-dunnit story.”

“Bulma, please!” he whined.

“Please what?”

“I can fix this, but until then, I’m begging you and your friends, _please_ don't say anything to anybody. If my employer ever found out that we so much as brushed elbows on a train, I’m fucking East River chum.”

Well, that certainly was not the excuse she thought was coming. The desperation dripping down Vegeta’s face felt earnest. Then again, with his A-list acting talent, it was probably just blood.

* * *

If he’d had any doubts that she was able to throw him off balance without even trying, the blood ruining his new suit put them to bed. That fucking Irish Giant would normally never have touched him, if his brain had been paying attention to the fight and not running around trying to find a way to make her stay. Then again, it seemed like getting clocked in the face was a successful, if unorthodox, tactic. Maybe the sight was cathartic.

Maybe she’d even decide it was punishment enough that she wouldn’t get him killed. Frieza was not what you’d call forgiving. If he knew Vegeta had anything to do with losing the chance to take over Capsule Corp, his career and finances would be utterly ruined. If he even got the slightest notion Vegeta had been acting on the side of his “enemies”...he shuddered. He’d been mostly exaggerating about the risk of murder, but more than one employee of PTO had been in a tragic car accident or a random mugging gone wrong. It might be a coincidence that those happened after the employee in question pissed Frieza off. Might be.

“Look. Hate me, that’s fine. Well, not _fine,_ it sucks. But I can’t stop you.” Fuck, his nose hurt.

“Damn straight you can’t. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t call the SEC to kick your ass.”

_A reason. One reason._ He had at least one reason, right? His mind ran in circles, frantically searching for something to throw at her. Finally, and with very little thought, he blurted out the first thing he could think of.

“You still have a question, you know.” He didn’t know what that was supposed to do, but he was desperate and that was the only thing that came to mind to try to stop her. “From the ten. You should ask about the three percent.”

That shook her. “What?” she asked with a dangerous calm. “What are you talking about?”

“The takeover. Your family had forty-nine percent of the company stock. PTO ended up with forty-eight. Ask who had the other three percent. The three percent that kept us from winning.” _Please. Please let this work._

She hesitated. “How could you possibly know that? We looked for ages and found nothing.”

“That’s because I’m very good.”

They sat silently as she bored into him with her eyes. He forced himself to keep his eyes on hers, to keep from speaking out with explanations. Anything that even sniffed of fabrication and she’d be gone for good. She stared, searching for any hint he was lying.

Finally, her shoulders came down a nanometer. “You have them.” It wasn’t a question. “You have them and you kept the PTO from taking over.”

He slowly nodded. She gave a huff of disbelief. “But why? What possible reason would you have to dick your own side over like that?”

He finally looked away. She expected him to spin a shitty tale of redemption, of a secret agent or guardian angel trying to save a little old man and his tiny multi-billion-dollar family business. But they both knew it was something much less noble. Petty, even. “Frieza’s basically owned me since I was sixteen. He tricked me into borrowing money for rent, and college, and.... At this point I’ll be working for him until I drop dead. I fucking hate the bastard. I just...” He paused, unsure how to put it into words. “I wanted to see him lose. For once in my life, I wanted to see him try for something and fail.”

She was silent for a long time. He kept his face averted, unable to look at her and see if she believed him. Finally, he heard a small laugh escape her, and he brought his head around to find her, to his indescribable relief, smiling at him. “You risked your career, and possibly your life, just to cockblock your boss.” She laughed again, and he risked a tiny smile of his own. “You unbelievable nerd.”

“Yeah, but I’m cute. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

Her smile widened, and she pulled out a pack of wet-wipes from her purse. Gently, she cleaned the drying blood off his face, ignoring his winces and curses as she bumped his injured nose.

She finished cleaning. “There. _Now_ you’re cute. What are you planning to do with the stock?”

“I’m going to have to sell it pretty soon to pay back what I borrowed to get it, before I get my kneecaps busted.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Know any buyers who might want it?”

“I might be able to think of a few.” She stood up as the train began to slow for the next station, and he rose with her. “This actually is my stop,” she admitted ruefully.

For a moment she stared at him as though trying to figure out the answer to a trick question. Then, to his complete astonishment, she impulsively leaned over and kissed him. He involuntarily closed his eyes, his whole body going still as his entire brain was taken over by the feel of her soft lips against his. He’d just started to recover and lean in to the experience when she pulled away. He opened his mouth to complain but she spoke first, her voice teasing and full of promise.

“You want to continue the scenic ride to the airport, or do you want to get off here?” He quickly clenched his jaw to keep his mouth from falling open like an idiot. She smirked, running a finger down his chin. “It’s my place, so you don’t have to worry about my ghosting you in the morning. And I know you won’t either. if you disappear, I can just rat you out to your boss and get my revenge.”

The pair of them rocked as the train came to a stop, the door whooshing open. She turned and walked out, leaving him frozen in shock. When she got to the platform, she looked over her shoulder. “Coming, or do you still not put out on the first date?”

_Move. Move. Fucking move, right now._ As he saw the doors getting ready to close again he spurred himself into a sprint and jumped out beside her.

“I might be talked into giving up my lofty principles.” He grabbed her waist, pulling her close. She leaned into him, her body pressing into his and sending waves of heat into his chest. She reached up, placed her hand on his cheek and he stared for a moment into her captivating blue eyes, holding on to the moment as long as he could. Trying to convince himself this was really happening. That maybe, for once in his life, things were going to turn out okay.

She pulled away, grabbing his hand. “Come on. It’s not far.”

He shook his head to bring himself back to Earth. “Go ahead, I’ll catch up in a second. I just have to send a quick text to my assistant to grab my dry cleaning. Blood-covered clothes don't inspire confidence in clients for some reason.” He pulled out his phone as she gave a wink and started for the stairs.

Raditz   
  
**V:** Raditz! You around?   
  
**V:** About that thumb drive I gave you...   
  
**V:** UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE are you to slip it onto Frieza’s desk like I told you, okay?   
  


No response. Shit. It had been a good plan. Buy the stock at the low point when the takeover seemed inevitable, block the sale, pretend to discover the dummy corp, sell it to Frieza now that the price bounced after the failed takeover, and get both a promotion and a huge chunk of change.

But now... _Fuck._ He typed again.

Raditz   
  
**V:** Understand? DO NOT GIVE HIM THAT THUMB DRIVE.   
  
**V:** I WILL LITERALLY KILL YOU IF YOU DO.   
  


He stood, waiting for the read notification. It didn’t show. Asshole wasn’t checking his texts.

“Are you coming or what, tough guy?” She was standing at the base of the stairs.

He checked one last time. Still not on read. _Shit._ Sighing, he shoved the phone back in his pocket. _Fuck it. It’ll be fine._

“Hell yes, I’m coming.” Smiling, he ran for the stairs.


End file.
